


The Inside Ocean

by Calantian, ZScalantian



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: But also lots of cute stuff, Catharsis, Dive Into The Heart (Kingdom Hearts), Drive Forms (Kingdom Hearts), Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Kingdom Hearts III by 3 to 4 years, Warning for thalassaphobia, Warning for video game style death - the character comes back, but those are the ones with important scenes, dream dropping, fluffy animal cuddle piles, loads of other characters in the background, marriage proposals, new keyblades, other games have happened in the meantime, warning for blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24566785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calantian/pseuds/Calantian, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZScalantian/pseuds/ZScalantian
Summary: New jobs, new responsibilities.   New house, in dire need of fixing up.   New...Wait, wait, there's a lot of old baggage that still needs unpacking.Kairi and Riku dive into Sora's nightmares.
Relationships: Kairi/Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 32
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	1. Dive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The thing about the ocean is that the surface won’t always tell you what is going on underneath.”  
> ― Jennifer Arnett, Into Her Chambers

Kairi drifts up until she feels soft, warm air on her face. The stars are spilled across the sky like a reflection of the ocean, which sparkles with phosphorescent blue plankton. The sky and sea merge in the distance, so there’s no clear horizon. She feels as though she could just keep floating up and up, no world borders to contain her.

But even if she can’t see them, the borders are still there, keeping each star its own self-contained system, locked for safekeeping. She touches her mouthpiece, the hard plastic tube of her snorkel running alongside her face. She remembers swimming in another ocean without coming up for air. Sora had wanted her and Riku to see all the worlds he’d been to, and meet all his friends. Donald and Goofy went with them partway, to the worlds they couldn’t visit without changing form. 

Atlantica was beautiful, magical, with its deep blues and winding currents, its coral castle, its talking fish and headstrong Princess. She’d liked singing underwater, how her lungs took in the water as though it were air; she’d loved seeing how everyone looked under the form-change spell. Sora as a dolphin was just too perfect, and Riku as some sort of shark was very good, but turtle-Goofy stole the show. She’d liked swimming around with her pink jellyfish tentacles trailing behind her.

She ducks back under, smiling. Saltwater leaks between her teeth until she clamps her lips shut again. She can see Sora and Riku’s dive lights through the nighttime sea, several meters down, but she can also track where they’ve been via swirling trails through the bioluminescent plankton. She kicks and twirls, arms out to her sides, and leaves a spiral afterimage of herself, a sea-angel. 

The ocean around the Destiny Islands is pretty magical too.

She follows a beam of light. Fish flicker through it, attracted by the brightness - crimson bigeyes, soldierfish with yellow fins, a school of striped squirrelfish. It’s Riku’s light she’s following, she sees as she gets closer. The yellow patches on his wetsuit glow in her light, easy to spot underwater. He kicks up to the surface without seeing her, and she follows, kicking her flippers extra hard so she bursts out of the water just behind him, grabbing onto his broad shoulders.

He half-shouts, and she feels a shimmer of energy collect in his right hand, as he _almost_ summons his keyblade. Beneath her fingers, pentagons form and fade away without manifesting into a real barrier. She laughs.

Riku spits out his snorkel. “Kairi!” he says, half a gasp of relief and half exasperation.

“Sorry,” she says, still giggling. Their legs bump against each other, treading water in different patterns. He turns, she lets go, and they pull apart a little.

“Wanna see something cool?” he offers.

“Like what?”

“Take a deep breath.” He reaches out for her hand, tugging her down with him. She gets her snorkel back in her mouth just in time. Down again, angling toward Sora’s light. 

Something immense glides past her in the water, a rough white diamond-shape, trailing bubbles. She jerks on Riku’s arm and points. He grins at her, his eyes squinching up behind his mask.

Manta rays. They’re all around them, the biggest ones with wings three times as wide across as she is tall. They swoop slowly through the plankton, rectangle mouths open wide. She reaches out as one passes her and touches the edge of its soft fin. Sora’s filming them on his gummiphone.

The three of them watch the giants for a long time, diving up and down for air as they need. A heaviness gradually settles in her body. She can tell she’s getting tired, and she blinks her light twice as a signal. The two lights blink back. She surfaces. There’s a pink glow about twenty meters away from her, the marker she set on their anchored boat. Kairi strikes toward it, hearing the boys surfacing behind her, blowing water out of their snorkels to clear them. 

She clambers aboard the wooden boat, moving slowly because there’s nobody else inside it yet to help keep it balanced. She pulls off her gear and stows it back in a mesh bag under the bench. There’s water in her left ear, an irritating tickle, and she tilts her head to the side, shaking it, but the water doesn’t come out.

“What’s the matter?” Sora asks, latching onto the boat and pushing his mask up, skewing the brown spikes of his hair. Riku is right beside him, but swims around to the other side.

“Nothing, just water in my ear.”

“Oh!” he says. “I can help with that.” He hoists himself in - Riku moves in tandem, and she leans a little towards Sora’s side, compensating for Riku’s greater weight and keeping the boat steady. Sora reaches out, his hand hovering inches away from her ear. She feels something _heavy_ beside her cheek and the water drains away.

She touches her ear. “What was that?”

He grins. “A _really_ small Gravity spell.”

“Very clever, Sora,” Riku says, and Sora puffs up at the praise.

They put their gear away and row back to the main island, passing the scattered boats of night fishers. The mountains loom up as black shapes against the hearthfire of the stars, but not everybody’s gone to bed, and there’s still plenty of lights left to steer toward. That’s good for Kairi and Sora, because they don’t see that well in the dark. Riku claims he doesn’t either, but he doesn’t need a flashlight walking at night and he never bumps into anything when the house is dark, even when they first moved in and weren’t used to where things were yet.

There’s a light on the play island, too. Somebody has a bonfire going on the beach, and she’s struck by a pang of sweet nostalgia. They haven’t gone out there in months. They’ve been too busy. New house, new jobs. Maybe they’ve outgrown the place, though she hopes not just yet. She and Sora are only eighteen, Riku only nineteen. They could have gone there tonight, but they wanted to go diving instead…

“Hey,” says Riku. “You’re wobbling.” He and Sora are rowing while she steers, and she realizes she’s tilted the rudder so they’re angled toward the bonfire instead of toward home.

“Oops,” she says, and fixes it.

They pull the boat up, sliding it across the sand to rest near the white wooden fence that marks the border between the beach and the rest of the island. They walk past the little houses near the shore onto a path leading into the jungle. The shadowy trees hum with insects, and the thick overhanging branches mean the path gets dark quickly. After she stumbles over a root, Riku reaches out to take her hand. 

Kairi plans to make lights for the path with bits of metal and glass, and a charm set inside them to make them glow. It’s just one of many improvements she wants to make to their new house. Even though they moved in four months ago, the list of projects posted on their fridge doesn’t seem to get shorter. 

Another couple of minutes and she can see their porch light through the trees. The house comes into view. An old lady who sold fruits and veggies at a roadside stand moved away to the other side of the island just as Kairi, Sora, and Riku graduated. Kairi’s well-off adopted father had offered to help her buy a house, and Sora’ and Riku’s parents had offered to help build one, but between the three of them, they already had enough munny saved from their adventures to purchase this private, tiny space. The garden was in great shape, even if the house needs some fixing.

They walk up the steps onto the wrap-around deck. One of their earliest repairs was the outdoor shower, and they cram in under the spray together, washing away sand and the stickiness of drying seawater. Sora says, “Something in your hair, Kairi,” and aims the detachable showerhead at her. She squeaks and raises her arms in front of her face, shielding. 

“Lemme get it,” says Riku, taller, and takes the showerhead, aiming it down instead of directly at her. She feels his fingers in her hair, tugging gently. He holds his hand out for her to see. On his palm is the tiniest seastar she’s ever seen, small as her pinky nail. 

“It’s cute!”

“Really cute!” agrees Sora.

Riku looks around and pulls a blue plastic bucket toward him. He sets the seastar gently inside with a squirt of shower water. “It ought to be okay overnight. We’ll take it back down in the morning.”

They rinse their wetsuits and leave them hanging on the deck railing to dry. Their bedroom leads right onto the deck via a sliding glass door, and Sora stops for exactly a microsecond to pull on some shorts before collapsing onto the bed. Before diving, they spent the day repainting the spare room, in addition to all the weeding and pruning and pest-checking the garden needs on a daily basis, so it’s no wonder they’re all beat.

Riku knocks his knee against Sora’s ankle, dangling off the edge of the mattress. “You hungry at all?”

Sora sits up like someone jolted him with a Thunder spell. “Yeah!” he says, and bounces out of the bedroom and into the combined kitchen/living area.

They already ate dinner, but diving burns a lot of calories. Kairi’s hungry again too, even if she’s too tired to prepare anything. Sora digs through their half-sized fridge, pulling out leftovers from meals their families gave them. They’re all three decent cooks - actually, Sora’s training with Little Chef has made him a _great_ cook - but try telling their parents that. Care packages come over on a thrice-weekly basis, no matter how much they protest there isn’t enough room in their fridge.

There’s ceviche and kalua pork, fruit salad and fruit dumplings, a good bowl of two-finger poi, and her favorite vanilla-mango pudding. She puts a little bit of everything on her plate. Under the table, her feet tangle with Sora’s and Riku’s. She takes a big bite of pudding, closing her eyes to appreciate the sweet, rich flavor. When she opens them, Sora is grinning at her like a dope.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, then sits back, leaning his chair on its hind legs, using his feet hooked around their calves to keep his balance. “It’s just… this is nice, you know? Being with you guys, without anything looming over us.”

“It’s good,” she smiles, and Riku murmurs, “Yeah.”

When they’re done - it doesn’t take long, they all practically inhale their food - Riku starts collecting dishes. “I’ll wash up,” he says. “Sora, remember you gotta get up early tomorrow.”

“Huh?” says Sora, then smacks his forehead. “Oh man, the electrician!”

There were cane rats in the attic when they first moved in, making nests and chewing wires, and the exterior lights on the garden side of the house don’t work. They got rid of the rats, but despite their general DIY attitude to fixing their new home, none of them know how to safely rewire a house. Riku and Kairi have morning errands tomorrow, which means Sora’s gonna have to get up before his usual noon to deal with the electrician.

“Set your alarm,” Kairi chuckles.

Riku deposits the plates in the sink, and grins at Sora over his shoulder. “And turn the volume way up.”

Sora pulls his gummi-phone out, rolling his eyes at them. “Yeah, yeah.” 

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡

There’s something cold along his side. No, not _cold_. More like the absence of something warm. Riku reaches an arm out, encounters an empty space where he expects to find Sora. “Mmph,” he grunts, and pries a bleary eye open. 

Kairi’s head rests against his left shoulder, her arm across his back, but the covers on Sora’s side are kicked back and he’s not there. The sheer weirdness of it is enough to wake Riku up properly. Sora is a lump in the morning, what’s he doing up before him?

He stretches, but he can’t quite reach his gummiphone on the nightstand to check the time without moving and bothering Kairi. “Mm,” he says again, then holds his breath and listens. Even barefoot, Sora clomps and clatters when he moves. If he’s awake and in the house, he’ll make noise, but there’s nothing. Riku exhales, and then breathes in deep through his nose. He’s always had a keen sense of smell, and exposure to the darkness strengthened it.

He tunes out Kairi next to him, who smells kind of like ocean breezes, plumeria, and lately garden soil, but mostly like herself. The space in bed next to him smells like Sora, saltwater and sunshine and boy. That’s expected, since he must’ve been sleeping here until recently, but the scent is fading, and it’s not fresher anywhere else in the house. 

He really doesn’t want to wake Kairi and worry her, but he also wants to check his phone. “Dear heart,” he whispers.

“Wnrfl?”

“Move your arm, please.”

“Wlfgl.” Her arm starts sliding across his back, then stops with her palm between his shoulder blades.

“Little more.”

“Riku,” she says, entirely awake.

“What?”

“There’s something weird on your back.”

He twists his neck to try and see. Over the curve of his shoulder, he can see his left shoulder blade and the top of Kairi’s hand, but not whatever her hand’s resting on. “What is it?”

“A marking of some kind,” she says, and he’s out of bed and into their postage-stamp sized bathroom before she’s finished saying it. In the mirror, the Dream Eater symbol gleams lurid pink between his shoulder blades. His jaw clenches so hard it creaks.

He reaches for the heart-shaped mark, sweeps his fingers over it, but feels only smooth skin. Kairi follows him in and touches it as well, her fingers light and hesitant. “What is it? It doesn’t feel like a bad thing.”

“Well, it’s not a good thing either.” He rubs his fingers over it again. There’s not even a rise in his skin to mark the emblem’s edges. Kairi’s fingers drift over to brush against his, and he explains. “It’s the Dream Eater symbol.” 

Her eyes widen. She’s heard the story, but she’s never seen a Spirit or a Nightmare, except the Chirithies, whose marks are hidden under capes. “Does that mean we’re dreaming?”

“Or we’re inside a dream,” he answers, then continues grimly, “I can’t sense Sora.”

She steps back into the bedroom, then with running steps, checks the rest of the house. Riku follows.

He’s not in the bedroom, the bathroom, the guest room, or the living area. Riku goes down to the yard. Sora’s not there either. The hens in the coop at the bottom of the garden are clucking and fussing around, and Riku pulls out a bucket to feed them with, since he’s here anyway. 

Then he stops. The chickens in the coop run over with excited cackles, seeing him holding the bucket… but they’re not _their_ chickens. They have a mixed flock that the old lady left, brown and black and red and iridescent green, but these birds are pastel blue, violet, pink, and yellow. They blink sideways up at him, wondering why he’s not dispensing their breakfast, and their eyes are black with yellow star-shaped pupils. The Dream Eater emblem shines on their breast feathers.

He empties the bucket slowly, and goes back to the house. On the far side of the deck, Kairi meets him, holding the blue bucket that held the starfish last night. She tips it to show him it’s empty. He runs his fingers over the dry plastic bottom and tries to swallow the panic in his throat.

“Our suits are hanging up,” she says, and he looks at the rail where they left them. “In the closet, I mean.”

“Maybe Sora actually got up early,” he says, knowing this is denial. Sora’s messy, and leaves his clothes strewn everywhere. He wouldn’t have put the wetsuits away. Sora likes doing things together. He’d have waited for them to take the seastar back. 

He tells Kairi about the chickens, and her face turns pale under her freckled tan. She steps through the sliding door to their room and comes back clutching their gummiphones. “There’s no service,” she says. Riku thumbs his on, - it’s forty past six, he notes - and it’s true, there’s no bars. 

Somehow, though, the panic’s fading. Time to stop being frantic, time to slow down and take things step by step. “I think we must be inside Sora’s dream,” he says. “Let’s see what town’s like.”

They get dressed, both picking practical, comfortable clothes that are easy to run and fight in. Kairi wears shorts under her lilac skirt, and a short-sleeved hoodie with deep pockets to carry things in. Besides his jeans and zipped shirt, he makes sure to grab boots whose tread hasn’t worn down, and gloves with wrist support. His left wrist is still weaker than his right, years after the fight where Roxas clobbered it.

There’s no one in town. It’s the weekend, there should be kids everywhere, and people in their gardens or running errands or just out enjoying the day. The breeze sweeps dust along the sandy paths, the fountain in the town square bubbles happily, and the birds sing without interruption, but there aren’t any people. When Riku looks closely at the birds sitting in trees or on telephone wires or winging across the blue sky, they’re like the chickens. Spirit Dream Eaters. There’s no sign of Sora.

“Let’s check the island,” Kairi says, meaning the play island.

They push out their boat and row across, tying up at the dock, splashing through the shallows and across the yellow sand beach. There should be a passel of kids here, too, but there’s not.

Riku walks up the path to the secret place, ducking in through the vine-covered opening and creeping along the tunnel. Even crouching, his back bumps against the rough ceiling until he comes out into the cavern. Kairi has to bend to get through, but she fits more easily than he does.

There are more drawings in here than he remembers, etched onto the stone walls. They’re all at kid height, imaginative scenes with stick figure people and funny fantastic animals. His eyes are drawn like a lodestone to the sketches of Sora and Kairi, holding out paopu fruit to each other.

Kairi takes his hand. “Sora and I were talking, a while back. Should we add you to it?”

“No,” he says, sincerely. “This is your thing. I don’t need to be part of it.”

They walk to the other side of the island, the secret cove. A log raft is sitting on the beach there. Kairi runs up to it, exclaiming. Riku hangs back.

“Look at this!” she says, pointing to some indiscernible mark on the canvas sail. “It’s exactly like the one we made!”

“I’ll bet it is the same one. Or at least a close imitation.” He can’t help glaring at the raft. It hasn’t existed for four years, but seeing it on this beach is eerily familiar. “This was here during the Mastery exam Sora and I took.”

“Didn’t you time-travel for that?”

“Yeah.” He looks at her, down at himself. They both look exactly the same as yesterday. If they’ve traveled through time, it’s not through the method he’s familiar with.

“Alright,” he says. “Looks like we’re supposed to take the raft. But let’s go prepared this time.”

A smile darts across Kairi’s face. “You mean, you’ve changed your mind about three or four fish and some coconuts being enough food for a transoceanic voyage?”

He starts walking back to the other beach, calling over his shoulder, “I don’t remember you or Sora arguing.”

At the house, they gather what they think they’ll need. Their stash of munny, greatly depleted by the house purchase. Loads of potions and ethers, a couple tents. Riku pulls out a cooler from the storage space under the deck and packs it from the fridge. Kairi picks through a drawerful of accessories, rings and bangles and amulets, and shouts questions at him from the bedroom. Does he want high defense or high attack? How about elemental protection? 

“Just grab the most powerful ones,” he calls back, and she pops out to frown at him. 

“We have a _lot_ of stuff,” she says. “I need to narrow it down.” Sora always carries tons of junk around with him, his pockets sagging with the weight, but Riku and Kairi both prefer to travel lighter. 

“Status protection, then.” He hates getting stunned, confused, or poisoned, though he’s never found blindness too troublesome.

“Roger that,” she says, and disappears again. He can hear her working, clinking metal and chiming bells. Then there’s a silence long enough that he starts worrying.

“Kairi?”

She steps out. She’s holding something cupped in her hands, looking uncertain. “I…”

Concern makes his heart beat faster. “What’s wrong?”

She holds her hands toward him, parts them slowly, revealing a pair of thalassa shell charms. His breath catches. They’re beautiful, nothing like the tacky imitations sold in gift shops. They’re not even like the childish version Kairi’s carried with her for years, since Sora gave back her good luck charm. He lifts one gently from her hand, its silver chain dangling. The shells, shading from blue to green on top, pink to yellow below, have been lacquered to a lustrous sheen, and their edges thinly gilded. The one still in her hand has gold-edged shells around a golden crown. The one he’s holding has platinum, with the unbound heart emblem from his old keyblade in the center.

He turns it over. On the reverse side, there are lines of script flowing across each concave shell. An embedded gleaming platinum heart marks where to start reading.

_Distant from you, I dreamed of you._

_We went forward apart,_

_until we arrived where all paths meet._

_Let’s make an oath._

_From now on, we’ll go together._

“Kairi… this is…”

“I kept waiting for the right time,” she says, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “I thought maybe at graduation, or when we moved in, but it was never quite…”

“Quite what?”

She squares up her shoulders and looks him in the eye. “Never quite romantic enough. But I’m tired of waiting. Would you marry me?”

His breath huffs out, half a laugh. The whole world goes watercolor. He can’t tell what his face is doing exactly, except he probably looks like a dope. “You sure?” he asks.

She nods. She’s so beautiful. He pulls her to him and kisses her, on her freckled cheeks and above her blue-violet eyes, on her soft lips. Kisses her again and again, feeling like he can’t get enough air, but also like he doesn’t need it, if he has her.

Finally she pulls away a little, but not out of his arms. “I’d like an answer.”

“That wasn’t enough of one?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Then, yeah. Yes. Absolutely, I will marry you.”

She leans her head against him, slumping with relief. “Oh, good.”

“You thought I was gonna say no?”

She thumps one hand against his arm. “You’re the practical one. I thought you’d say we better wait until we’re older.”

He holds her tighter. “No way. I’ve been dreaming about this since…” _Since forever_ , he thinks. The edges of the charm in his hand press into his fingers, and he loosens his grip, suddenly worried about breaking it.

“You made one for both of us?” he asks, and she nods against him, the fabric of his shirt shifting with the motion.

“I wanted to ask you at the same time. But I was going through the accessories, and I thought,” the tips of her ears turn even pinker, “I thought maybe you could use the charm as a keychain. Since we’re setting off again.”

He kisses the top of her head. “It’s a good idea.”

“I thought so.”

Riku lets loose of her with one arm only, holding out his hand and calling Braveheart to him. Unlike Sora, he doesn’t go wild with keychains. Usually, he’s happy to stick with one keyblade, knowing what it can do, that he can trust it. (The memory of Way to the Dawn breaking still catches in his throat, even though that worked out for the better in the end.)

Braveheart is cool to the touch, calm even though his heart is pounding. He unhooks its keychain, and the hilt shivers in his grip, unsure of what form to take. He clips the thalassa charm on, and the whole blade blurs behind violet light, so bright he squints. 

When the brightness clears, the only part of the new keyblade that still resembles Braveheart is the cylindrical grip, though it’s gleaming silver now, not plain grey, and the key still has Braveheart’s long reach. The guard is a pair of curving blue-green bat wings; the platinum blade is hollow with a chain running up the center, more delicate than the one on Oblivion; the teeth echo the charm’s shape in stained glass, though the unbound heart symbol is larger and filled now with swooping curves and points that remind him of flowers and Sora’s crown necklace.

He’s never had a keyblade before, he realizes, that feels like _home_. He’s had ones that remind him of where he got them, ones that felt triumphant or determined or powerful. Way to the Dawn felt like hopeful resolve, but always carried the weight of every price he paid to get it. Braveheart, which he can still feel under this new one, always there for him, is exactly the steely resolve he feels toward protecting his friends.

But this one wraps itself around him, warm and gentle, but fierce too. An ocean buoying him up and making him lighter, supporting him as much as he’s holding it.

“Thanks,” he says, a totally inadequate word to convey to it and Kairi both how grateful he is. He kisses the top of Kairi’s head again. “Thank you.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she says, tucked against him. “Has it got a name?”

Like always, the name comes without thinking, part and parcel of the new blade. He smiles. “Yeah. It’s gonna be useful, I can tell. It’s called Way to the Heart.”

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	2. Vortex

They push the raft out and climb aboard. Kairi scrambles to get the sail. Behind her, she hears Riku mutter, “I swear, if Ursula shows up…” and she laughs. The initial frantic fear of Sora’s disappearance has subsided, taking the form of a tight ball of worry under her breastbone. She’s dealt with that feeling before, she knows how to work past it. At least she remembers who he is this time, and she’s not doing this alone. 

Blood rushes to her face every time she glances at Riku. The silver chain of the charm flashes as he moves, peeping from under his collar. She made the charms almost a year ago, staying up nights so she could work in secret. She almost can’t believe she was bold enough to finally ask him. She’s still breathless that he said yes, and she has to shake herself to refocus on managing the sail.

They haven’t been sailing long when Riku squints and points at a tiny dot moving over the pale grey horizon. “Hey, Kairi, what’s that?” 

She brought binoculars, wearing them around her neck. She peers through them. “It’s a bird, or something.” It’s flying kind of wobbly, like it’s pushing against the wind. She hands the glasses over to Riku.

He watches for a minute, then says in a tone of mixed alarm and delight, “It’s a Spirit! I think… yeah, it’s Komori.” He turns to her, handing the glasses back. “Hold on a second.” He dashes away in a blur of purple.

She watches him go, alternately dashing and leaping, getting closer to the little Spirit. If he screws up his timing, he’ll fall into the sea, and she’ll steer the raft toward him, but she doesn’t think he will. And he doesn’t, and in three minutes he’s back, with a small bat-creature in his arms.

“It’s so cute!” she coos. It’s got a round yellow body, star-marked wings, large ears lined with fur, and a big, fanged grin. Its eyes are blue arches against black sclera. It squirms loose from Riku’s arms and flaps around his head, whistling happily.

Riku grins up at it. “That’s Komori,” he says. “I think she missed me.” The bat chirps, does a loop-de-loop, and lands clinging upside down to the yardarm.

“So we _are_ in a dream,” she says.

“Gotta be,” says Riku. “Hey, turn around. I want to check something.”

She does, and feels his fingers brush across her back as he pulls up her hoodie and the tank top beneath. “Hm. Nothing there,” he says.

She cranes to look over her shoulder, seeing only rucks of pink fabric. “Looking for a mark?”

“Yeah. I thought…” He trails off, pulling the shirts down. “You’re not a Dream Eater. How are you here then?”

“Dunno. Maybe something to do with being a Princess?” It’s her usual explanation for the unexpected things she can do.

Komori whistles at them, sounding urgent, and they glance up. The bat flaps up into the sky again, which is turning darker and testy. 

Riku looks grim. “This happened before, too. We set off and a storm came up. That’s when we got separated.”

She reaches down for his right hand with her left, and summons Destiny’s Embrace with her right. She holds the keyblade up, reaching inside herself for longing and conviction, and golden chains of light burst from its tip, arcing down to wrap around their clasped hands. Riku blinks at her.

“I learned it from Master Aqua,” she says, “when I went to train with her.” Her confidence in her skills had been low going into the final battle with Xehanort, even though she’d learned powerful spells and abilities training outside time with Lea and Merlin. She (and everyone) had paid the price for her hesitance. She’d taken lessons at the Land of Departure afterward, resolved not to let it happen again. Merlin had been a good teacher, but he wasn’t actually a warrior, and Aqua had plenty of battlefield lessons to impart.

“Neat. This way, we can’t get separated.” He swings their hands. “Don’t know how good it’ll be if we get into a fight.”

“I’ll release it.” Before she can say anything else, Komori swoops down again, landing between them to hook her tiny feet through the links of the chain. The little creature huddles into a ball and makes a distressed cheep. 

The raft tosses as the waves grow abruptly wild, and they both duck to avoid the swinging yardarm. Rain comes down with the force of a hammerblow. The rope for the sail is lashing about like a live thing; Kairi tries catching it, but it rips away from her, leaving a painful red mark across her palm.

Riku tugs her down, to huddle by the mast. “Don’t worry about it,” he half-shouts. “One way or another, I think we’re going down the ocean’s gullet here.”

A jolt of fear goes through her. She loves the ocean, has always felt safe living by it and playing in it. But she respects it, too. There’s a lot that can go wrong at sea, and drowning’s a bad way to die. “This happened last time?” she checks.

He squeezes her hand. “Don’t worry. Like the raft, I’m pretty sure this is supposed to happen.”

The storm continues to toss them around like a child’s toy in a bathtub. Exactly like a bathtub - Kairi hears a great roaring noise and opens her squeezed-shut eyes to see a whirlpool ahead of them, the drain for a giant. She huddles herself against Riku, Komori a tiny, warm lump between them. 

The wooden timbers of the raft moan, a vibration she feels more than hears; they strain against each other under the wracking force of the waves. The rope burn on her hand stings as saltwater washes across it. The whirlpool roar is all-consuming, turning into a vast white noise that blots out everything else and goes on and on.

She realizes they are not moving anymore. She still feels the waves inside her body, muscle tremors and her inner ear remembering their pull, but they are not _actually_ moving. The white noise she hears now is indescribable - if you could hear each individual water droplet in a cloud, it might sound like this.

She peels her eyes open. The world around them is still deep ocean blue, a frozen hollow spiral with them at the center of the vortex, but it’s air around them, even though bubbles drift up through it. One floats by her face, and she can see her reflection in it, looking half-drowned.

“Hey,” says Riku in a rusty voice. He tugs at their joined hands. “You okay?”

“Think so,” she croaks back. They stand together. Komori lets loose of the chain and flutters around them, crying out gladly. Waves of energy accompany the cries, and Kairi feels less tired, and the burn on her hand stops hurting so badly. She looks at her palm. The red scrapes have faded to light pink. “She heals?”

“Yeah,” says Riku, holding a hand up to the Spirit, who nuzzles against it briefly. “She’s in Rescuer disposition, so she’ll provide support.”

“What a good girl you are, Komori,” says Kairi, and the bat does a happy somersault.

Energy renewed, Kairi can focus on looking around now. The raft is sitting on a platform of translucent glass. When she peers over the edge of it, she can see a long, winding stair spiraling down and down, with no visible end. 

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡

Kairi releases their joined hands. Riku flexes his, stretching the fingers and wrist, which tingle slightly. He summons his keyblade - Way to the Heart for now, and just the sight of it fills him with a warm rush of joy - and says, “Let’s go.” This place, despite presenting less of an obvious threat than the storm-tossed ocean they came from, has a darker, more dangerous feel. He prepares for attack at any moment.

He’s right to do so. The moment they step off the raft, Nightmare Dream Eaters burst out of the watery walls, a school of indigo seahorses and skeletal fish, blasting him and Kairi with elemental magic. They’re easy enough to take out, but there are _a lot_ of them, and their attacks blanket the landing with cascades of fire and whirling beams of water. He dodges and dashes his way through the onslaught, closing with them with slashing, darkness-infused strikes. 

“Look out!” Kairi shouts, and her keyblade goes whirling past him, striking a bony-headed fish that popped out behind him, ready to ram him. She teleports to her target, beating it back with swift hits. A crackling sound grabs Riku’s attention. He takes a long step over to stand back to back with Kairi, putting up a barrier around them both as firebombs rain from the sky, leaving behind pools of flame as they land. 

“Doing okay?”

“Great, but there’s a lot of these guys.”

“Yeah,” he says, and pats her shoulder with his free hand. “There’ll be an end. We just gotta get there.” He drops the barrier, returns the rain of fire with his own. Orbs of dark fire spit from the end of his blade, shooting in every direction. He can hear Kairi shouting battlecries behind him, and Komori shrieking overhead, high and thin. From the corner of his eye, he spots one of the fish moving oddly. He spins toward it and almost strikes it, but pulls the blow at the last moment. Its bones are teal blue, not poison purple, and it seems to wink one happy yellow eye at him before literally diving back into the fray.

He grins. It’s not only Komori who’s shown up to help, and when he double jumps up to give himself a clearer view of the battlefield, he can see another two of his and Sora’s Spirits attacking the Nightmares.

With five of them working at it, they mop up the rest of the enemies quickly. Riku lands by Kairi, and the Spirits cluster up around them. “Who are these?” Kairi asks, smiling with delight.

He digs in his pocket for some cookies. The Nightmares dropped treats as they dissipated, and he picked them up as he went, intending to give them to Komori as a thank-you. He hands them out, to a seahorse with fluttering fins, “This is Tab”, to a large salamander that’s pawing at his leg in its eagerness for the snack, “Mina,” and to the yellow-eyed fish, “and Bonnie.” Komori chirps loudly beside his ear.

“Ouch! I didn’t forget you, here.” He hands a cookie up to her. It vanishes through her fanged mouth with no sign of chewing or swallowing, but she croons and nuzzles his cheek before taking off again.

Kairi kneels. “Can I pet them?”

“Yeah. Sometimes they don’t like it though, or they have spots where they’re sensitive, so be careful.” 

She pats Mina’s head. “You’re so soft,” she hums, and the salamander leans into her hand, wiggling happily. Bonnie floats over Kairi’s shoulder, clearly wanting attention too, and Riku scritches his fingers across her skull, avoiding the sharp spikes. Tab, aloof, drifts away as though ready to move on.

Riku’s ready too. “Let’s get going.”

“Alright,” Kairi says, sounding regretful. She pats Mina one last time, then jerks in alarm as the salamander flops to the floor, spinning around on her back. “What?! Is it okay? What’d I do?” Mina flips back upright, chirring. Her tired-looking blue eyes have changed to green diamonds. 

“It’s okay,” says Riku. “Her mood changed, is all. She’ll fight a little differently now.”

“How neat!” Kairi pats Mina, one last time for real this time, and gets to her feet. She walks to the edge of the platform and looks down the center of the long staircase. “I don’t see any kind of bottom to this.”

He joins her. The smell of the sea floats up to him, secretive, as though it’s coming through a cave. “There’s something down there,” he says, “but it might be a long hike to get to it.”

She looks at him with a glint in her eye that makes his heart pound. “Bet we can make it shorter.”

“What do you -”

She jumps off, falling with her arms and legs spread, and her red hair streaming behind her. He stares down after her, an exasperated grin tugging at his mouth. Why are she and Sora always like this? Flinging themselves headfirst into danger without a care. Mina wriggles nervously beside him and Komori and Tab float out into the open air, bobbing to suggest that they’d like to follow this reckless, headstrong girl.

He does.

The Spirits vanish, going wherever they go when he doesn’t actively need them, or when he’s moving too fast for them to keep up. He tucks his arms and legs back to fall faster, uses a little magic to give himself a boost. He can see Kairi falling about forty feet ahead of him, and glimmers in the blue tunnel past her. Riku squints to see - enemies, or obstacles?

Neither. It’s keyblades, drifting down through the air. They’re all Sora’s. Mementos of different worlds and his friends there, victory trophies, even the gaudy, powerful ultima keyblades Sora worked hard to synthesize. Once Riku’s in the thick of them, they begin to shiver, producing a high, ringing noise that makes his skin crawl. He looks ahead, sees the silver-pink flash of Kairi’s barrier spell. No sooner does he see it than the blades around him flip to point directly toward him. 

He gets his own barrier up as they fly at him. First they come one by one, and he can parry them away or time his barrier to send them rebounding. As he does, he sees they’re all missing their usual keychains; the typical trinkets replaced by Dream Eater Nightmare marks. They begin to come several at once, from multiple directions. He gets the timing wrong on one set. Pumpkinhead and Crystal Snow slash long red furrows in his arm, and Sleeping Lion slams his hip hard enough to bruise. He bites his lip, dodges the next set, and casts a hasty Cure, enough to close the gashes and numb the pain.

The keyblades begin to sing and shiver again. They whirl round and round, so that Riku has to focus on moving forward and not getting sucked into their cyclone. Their ringing grows louder and louder. He cloaks himself in magic and charges on, trying to outpace them. The end’s in sight - a great ring of knobbly rust-colored stone, with a red bubble shining inside it. The storm of blades narrows in front of him, the funnel bottom of a tornado, so that he has only a wobbling pinhole view of the gateway. 

Kairi disappears through it. He swallows his cheer - there’ll be time enough for that once he gets out too. The pinhole is closing. He summons his keyblade and stretches it out in front of him, brute-forcing a path. Wind batters him, the keys passing inches from his skin. The air smells like metal, and the noise they make is a scream scraping his eardrums. 

A golden chain bursts through the cyclone and wraps around Way to the Heart. The leading links whip across his wrist and forearm. They don’t hurt, but wrap themselves securely around him, pulling him forward across the last distance and through the bubble.

Stony ground rushes toward him, and he barely manages to get himself upright in time to land hard on his feet. Something in his right ankle _pops_ , and a wave of fire runs up his leg. He sits down, half-falls, really, and grabs at it, biting his lip to keep from crying out. His mind is full of pain-stars and he scrabbles for the Cure spell, but this time it slips away from him.

“Riku!” Kairi drops to her knees beside him. The fresh scent of sap rolls off her, and the pain in his ankle abruptly drops to nothing, along with the leftovers in his arm and hip.

He exhales and flexes his foot gingerly. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she says, still with a line between her eyebrows, so he taps his fist against her shoulder. 

“Don’t worry. I’m fine now. You’re a great healer.” He envies her gift for it. He struggled with curative magic for a long time, preferring to rely on potions. Even now, if he’s not able to concentrate, his healing spells tend to fail, or come through weaker than he expects.

To prove his point, he stands and stamps his foot. No problems. He looks around. This is Sora’s nightmare, and that ring of brutal stone gave him some idea of what to expect… but this isn’t the Keyblade Graveyard. Not exactly. The ground is barren, and battle-scarred cliffs rise up jaggedly all around, but the stone is striated red and dark grey, not bronze. Gigantic bones stick out of the earth - ribs, a femur, a stacked tower of vertebrae. Strangely, he still smells the sea hiding under the aroma of sun-baked dust and the chalk-iron smell of bone.

“This looks grim,” he says, and Kairi nods, still subdued. “What’s the matter?”

“The keyblades… I don’t like that they attacked us.” 

He touches his arm, where there’s not even a mark left. “When we went to the sleeping worlds before, they were dreaming of what happened when they fell to darkness. I think this is sort of the same.” He gestures to the desolate scenery. “We’re in the dream version of a memory. It was an echo of what happened here before, the bad stuff bubbling up. It wasn’t him deliberately attacking us.”

Her lips tighten, but she says, “Maybe you’re right.” She smiles at him, then folds her hands behind her back and turns away, looking around. “Any ideas on where we should start searching?”

He hesitates - she’s clearly unconvinced - but he’s not going to make a big deal about it. He’s not sure of his theory either. He points instead, to a gap between two sheer cliffsides, some twenty meters onward. The ocean smell comes most strongly from there. “Let’s head that way.”

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	3. Desert

They make their way to the gap. A warm breeze flows through it, carrying a thin curtain of fine sand. It makes her eyes and nose itch, matching the prickling stress she feels, and she puts out a hand to shield herself. “I don’t feel anything on the other side,” she says.

Riku sniffs. “Me either.”

That’s not really a guarantee that there’s nothing waiting, she’s found. Heartless and Nobodies are much fewer in number than they used to be, but they still sometimes pop out of nowhere without giving away their presence beforehand. She presumes that Dream Eaters function under the same rule.

Before they reach the other end of the passage, she does sense something, an electric crackle that raises the hair on her arms. She pokes her head out, and a yellow orb of Thunder magic buzzes past her, its arcing tendrils reaching for her. She jerks back, flinging a sphere of water ahead as a decoy. Three more Thunder spells smash into it in short order.

She frowns - she doesn’t like fighting electric enemies. It’s hard to figure out their weaknesses. Sometimes it’s water, sometimes it’s ice, and sometimes it’s air. Not to mention, they’re usually fast, so if she judges wrong, they can make her pay before she can recover.

She bolts into the open. As soon as she can see the Nightmares - they resemble giraffes, eagles, and hungry ghosts - she focuses. Time moves in syrupy slow-motion. It takes a great deal of effort just to turn her head to look around, but she can feel the fizz of her shotlock building under her skin and behind her eyes. When time resumes its normal speed, she leaps into the air. The energy inside her shoots out as dozens of glowing golden orbs that she sends raining down. They splash into a garden of tall transparent flower shapes as they hit the ground, and she sends out a second, then third, salvo from them like seeds dispersed by a breeze before she lands.

The little ghosts must have been weak to light, because none made it through her attack. The eagles are drooping stunned in the air, and the giraffes are staggering and shaking their heads. Riku zips between them, dispatching them with swift slashes - he seems to have grown claws. His Dream Eaters do the same, and she sees some new faces helping out, Spirit versions of the enemies they’re up against. 

The fight ends swiftly after that. Riku approaches her, shaking out his hands, as Komori reappears above him in a poof of magic. “Nice work,” he compliments. 

She feels irritated, almost patronized, but she tucks it away. There’s no reason for it; they both fought really well just now. “Nice work yourself.” She reaches for his left hand and holds it up to examine it. Under her fingers, there’s the faintest chill of dissipating darkness. “How’d you do that, with the claws?”

He points his free hand at the bat chirping overhead. “I linked up with Komori to borrow her power.” He points at Mina, Bonnie, and the new ghost Spirit, which waves a fork and knife at him excitedly. “They’ve all got the same dark link, and those two,” he points at Tab and the remaining eagle, circling overhead, “are fire.” 

“Let me guess,” she says as the giraffe canters up, hooves flying every which way, “this one’s a thunder style.” It stops to nibble on Riku’s shoulder, and leans its long neck down to peer at her. She can feel the electricity crackling under its skin. “Hi.”

“This one’s Rafe,” Riku says, and pulls out some candy. He hands it to her. “Try feeding them.” The giraffe stares intently at the pink and purple sweets. When Kairi holds them out to him, a long violet tongue slithers out and sweeps them off her palm in one swift, ticklish motion. The others crowd around, too, and she hands candy to each of them. 

Riku introduces the eagle, Lyda, and the ghost, Cob. Kairi is enchanted. They’re so cute and colorful and sweet - they cuddle up to her for pats and scratches, wiggling with appreciation. 

There are things to be done, a boyfriend to save, so she can’t pet them all day. As soon as she starts walking on, though, temper starts creeping up on her again, a red flush up the back of her neck and to the tips of her ears. She stops and takes a deep breath. She doesn’t have any reason to be angry. Where is this coming from?

 _From Sora,_ she realizes. This is his frustration. Frustration with what? Is he here somewhere? “Sora!” she shouts, and it bounces back from the bluffs around them. 

_“Sora” “sora”_ _“sora”_

Riku stares at her. She explains, “I thought I felt him.”

He frowns, looking around. “I don’t. Not a whiff.”

She frowns too, then. The anger nags at her, like a burr caught in her clothes. “He’s irritated.”

“You think you’re catching an echo of what he’s feeling?”

“Hmm.” She reaches for the feeling, trying to locate its source, but it’s amorphous. “I dunno. Let’s keep moving for now.”

They trace an aimless path between the bluffs, Riku leading. Nightmares pop up to bother them, but it’s short work to take care of them with both her and Riku fighting, and his Spirits, too. A gleam of bronze catches her eye - a treasure chest.

She unlocks it with a tap of Destiny’s Embrace. A ruby-red bauble sits inside, and as she picks it up, the energy inside it seethes and expands. _“I know you will!”_ echoes in her ears. She remembers Sora’s gloved hand slipping out of hers, her little slice of sandy beach pulling away from the Door, and how their promise seemed so small in the vastness of the dark around them.

“But we did find each other again,” she says, and the energy settles.

“We did, didn’t we?” says Riku. He looks at her. “What did you think of?”

“After you guys sealed the Door, after fighting Ansem. When I went back alone to Destiny Islands.”

“Funny. I thought of the same time, but closing the Door, standing on the wrong side.”

Kairi looks at the bauble. Something sloshes around inside unpleasantly, making the hair on her arms rise. 

Riku takes it from her. “It looks like a figment to me, but I think it’d be a bad idea to make anything from it.”

“It’s a synthesis item?”

“Yeah, you can use it to create Dream Eaters. I bet anything that came from this’d be a Nightmare, though.” He closes his hand around it, and she feels it vanish. When he opens his hand, his palm is empty.

“What’d you do with it?”

He looks away from her, rubbing a hand against the side of his neck. A light blush sweeps over his cheekbones. “Ate it.”

She laughs, grinning open-mouthed. “What?!”

Riku jerks a thumb over his shoulder, pointing down at his Dream Eater sigil, which glows pink and gold through his shirt. “It’s right there in the name.”

“I didn’t realize it was literal!” She takes his hand again, running her fingers across his palm. There’s not even a trace of the energy left. 

“It’s not _that_ literal. I’m not gonna cook a figment stir-fry or something.”

She smiles at him. “Still. That’s amazing.”

The blush gets pinker and he tugs his hand away. “Let’s get going again.”

Kairi nods. “And let’s keep our eyes open for treasure chests on the way, too. If there are more of those, I want us to deal with them.”

Out past the next set of cliffs, the ground slopes away sharply into dull yellow dunes. The horizon is a sandy blur, but if she squints, she can make out a cluster of buildings in the wobbling heat haze. A half-buried, ruined town, not too far off.

When they get closer and can see the buildings more clearly, she’s uncomfortable again, and not just from heat and the ache in her legs and Sora’s still-present frustration. The shape of the doors, windows, and roofs remind her of Agrabah, but the carved geometric reliefs are more like the labyrinth in the Keyblade Graveyard than anything. When Riku suggests taking a break in the shade, she shakes her head.

“No, I don’t like this place. Let’s keep going.” 

She walks on, but he reaches out and takes her wrist. “You’re tomato-red,” he says. “We won’t stay long.”

Kairi puts her hands to her face - she does feel flushed and sweaty. She pulls her hair up, knots it behind her head. Riku hands her a metal water bottle, beaded with condensation, and she rests her head against it. Despite the desert environment, she doesn’t feel thirsty, but Riku takes a few sips of his own, looking pointedly at her. Once she starts drinking, she realizes that she _was_ thirsty. It’s worrying. She’s always in tune with her emotions and needs. This feels very wrong.

She puts the lid back on and sighs. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s up with me.” 

He shrugs and hands her a mango. The cooler, which he’d stored away in some aether-space earlier so it wouldn’t be swept off the raft, is sitting by his feet. “Fill me in. It’s probably got something to do with -” he waves his hands around, “ - all this.”

The mango is juicy and sweet, just what she needs. The Spirits crowd around her curiously, but when she offers them a piece, they all turn up their noses. Riku tosses them some cookies while she gathers her thoughts.

“I feel very irritated, and afraid, and stressed. I’m sure it’s Sora’s feelings, but I don’t know if it’s what he’s feeling _now_ , or it’s something he remembers, or if it’s just specific to this nightmare.”

Riku frowns. “I hope it’s not how he’s feeling now.”

“Me, too.” She hands the water bottle back to him, and he puts it away, vanishing the cooler. “Let’s keep moving.”

They find another two treasure chests. At the first one, she remembers standing in another desert, watching with horror as Donald collapses after casting Zettaflare. Riku remembers watching from a high cliff, a rock striking Goofy before the Thousand Heartless battle, the knight falling, unmoving.

The other chest is worse. A shiver goes through her as she remembers her heart leaving her body in the Secret Place, the gasping, breathless sensation of it. Then, almost conflated with the other memory, she recalls Xehanort’s keyblade striking her in the graveyard, the fiery pain of the blow, then the pins and needle iciness as her body crystallized.

This one leaves both her and Riku pale and shaking, and she reaches out to take his hand. His palm is clammy. She squeezes it. “I remembered,” he croaks, then shakes his head. He continues in a clearer voice. “I remembered darkness. Going into it on Destiny Islands, like an idiot, all willing. And then in the Graveyard, going down tooth and nail, because I didn’t want to leave Sora behind.”

“Same times, here,” she whispers. “Losing my heart on the Islands, and Xehanort killing me.” He flinches when she says that, and she leans into him, planting tiny kisses on his chest. He wraps his arms around her and holds her close for a minute, not talking.

“I’ve moved on from it,” she says. The fabric of his shirt catches a little on her chapped lips. “I mean, I’ve processed it, I’ve dealt with it. The way I feel upset about it right now, it’s not my feeling. This still bothers Sora.”

Riku runs his hands up and down her arms. Strange, to be so chilled suddenly, when she’s been too warm up until now. “Me too,” he says. “Well, my stuff, I’ve moved past. I don’t think that you -” his breath catches, “- you dying is ever gonna be easier to think about.”

She tilts her head to look up at him. There’s fear in his sea-green eyes, in the tired bags forming below them, in the slant of his silver eyebrows. “It happens to everyone someday,” she says. “We can’t be afraid of it. We just don’t want it to happen too soon.”

“Tell that to my heart,” he grumbles. “You two are both too reckless, it’s bad for me.”

She smiles gently. “Sorry to make you worry.”

He smiles back, even though the fear is still there. “Don’t be. I love that about you.” He holds his hand out, and she hands the figment to him. He eats it and they move on. 

There’s an open plaza in the center of the town, with a tower looming over it, dark gold stone and gleaming stained glass windows. A half-circle of nightmares appear in front of it, horned and sabre-toothed tigers and a giant, skeletal t-rex. The rex’s bones look half petrified, with growths of crystal spines refracting the desert sunlight. It roars and charges at her, lowering its head so its open jaw scrapes along the flagstones, striking sparks. 

She has half a second to morph her keyblade. She braces herself, winding up. The rex comes in range - she swings. Her hammerblow cracks the skull off the neck and sends it spinning across the plaza. She dodges the body, but instead of collapsing like she expects, it whips its tail at her. She dodges just in time. The spiked, clubbed end smashes the paving, and splinters of stone pepper her exposed skin.

“Kairi!” Riku shouts. He’s a blur of violet, spinning and slashing at the tigers.

“I’m oka-” she starts, but something seizes her from behind. Huge bone teeth click together, her legs and one arm trapped between them. She chokes back a scream, but can’t keep a wash of tears from making her sight blur. The teeth are crystal-edged, and slice right through her skin. A barrier explodes out from her, forcing apart the skull’s jaws, then crackles into starry pink fireworks, beating it back.

She lies limp on the ground for a moment, stunned by the sudden lightening of pressure, then props herself up with her good arm. She casts Curaga, and it’s followed milliseconds later by a Cura from Riku, and then one from a yellow tiger. It must be a Spirit, Riku’s version of the red-eyed Nightmare felines. The giraffe Rafe gallops by, and her skin goes momentarily stiff as a Protect spell settles into it. “Thank you!” she calls as she stands.

“They’re coming back!” Riku shouts, leaping in front of her, and fires off a Dark Firaga at the rex’s body. It stops charging, but two spears of ice appear over its head and shoot directly at them both. Riku jumps forward, melting both spears with a whirlwind of flame.

The skull, jaws snapping, red eyes leering, is heading right for her again. She sets a row of mines in front of it, but only slows it for a moment. As its maw opens wide, she jabs Destiny’s Embrace into the opening. 

The teeth snap down, almost to her shoulder. Riku shouts with alarm behind her. She morphs her keyblade just before the teeth touch her skin. A longbow forces the rex’s mouth back open. She swivels it and draws, aiming through the hole at the back of the skull where its spine should be. She looses. A sparkling arrow carries the skull back to its body, crashing them together in a burst of white stars. The impact knocks all its bones apart, ribs from hips from legs from tail. Even the skull falls into its upper and lower halves. Lyda, the eagle, strafes the wreckage with missiles. When the explosions clear, the bones are gone. 

Well, most of them. 

There’s another bony rex standing, almost shyly, in a corner of the plaza. Its bones are teal, purple, and magenta, and its eyes are contrite linear green. The last of the Nightmare tigers runs by it, and is poofed into oblivion by a smash of its tail. 

The Spirit taps its tail against the ground, a delicate motion that reminds Kairi of her grandmother tipping out tea leaves from her cup. It’s so unexpected, she almost laughs, but Riku grabs her by the arm and starts turning her around, examining her. “Are you okay? Do you need another Cure?”

She tugs her arm away. “I’m fine. Who’s this?” She jerks her head toward the rex. 

Riku’s hand stays stretched out to her for a beat, but then he whistles, and the rex picks its way across the square to him. It bends down so he can pat its snout. “How long were you there?” he asks affectionately, and it blinks at him.

“Thanks for finishing up for us,” says Kairi, and the rex shies away from her, almost trying to hide behind Riku. “Kind of shy, huh?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” The skeleton is crouching now, as low and small as a giant dinosaur can make itself. Riku is framed between its green eyes - when the rex meets Kairi’s gaze, it shuts them, leaving only black pits. It should be an alarming sight, considering its opposite number almost made lunchmeat out of her, but all she feels from it is gentleness. 

“You’re lovely,” she says, and it blinks one eye back open. “I’m glad you’re here.” It shuffles out from behind Riku and slides its nose forward to sniff her. Kairi pats it very gently. 

“Her name’s Kelly,” Riku says.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kelly.”

The rex makes a rumbling noise, then her eyes glow for a moment as she casts something. There’s a sudden new pulse in Kairi’s chest, just a tick behind her heartbeat - auto-life. If she runs into really bad trouble, this’ll give her the second chance she needs. 

Riku blinks. “Wow, she likes you.”

Kairi presses a hand to her chest. The spell vibrates through her ribs. “Thank you, Kelly, that’s really sweet.”

There’s a laugh from somewhere above, a voice like gravel. “An admirable effort, but your destinies will not be denied.”

Kairi looks up, and Destiny’s Embrace crashes into her hand with the force of a storm wave. Master Xehanort is standing on a terrace halfway up the tower. He grins, his yellow eyes gleaming with malice. “Your appointed dooms still await you: despair and death.”

“I don’t think so,” Riku grits, and sends a wave of blue fire up the side of the building. When the flames clear, Xehanort is gone, but his laughter falls down on them like stones. 

Kairi’s hands are sweating, and tears prickle the corners of her eyes. Her twinned heartbeat pounds in her ears. Some of this, at least, is her own anger. How dare he still be here, poisoning Sora’s dreams? She had nightmares about him for months after the Graveyard, but it’s been years now. How _dare_ he have hurt Sora so deeply, that it lingers like this?

“Riku,” she says through her teeth. “Let’s go kick his butt.”

He’s just as grim. “Let’s.”

The tower is full of sand inside, shifting and sliding down the stairs, so progress is a struggle. Kairi glides when she can, and Riku leaps from wall to wall, but Nightmares block their way, walls and the spiral steps collapse and crumble, and waterfalls of sand pour from above. All the way, the fallen master taunts them, his voice sliding past them like the sand. 

“Coward,” he calls Riku. “Treacherous, faithless, backstabber to friend and foe alike. A brittle pillar, ready to break.”

“Sacrificial pawn,” he calls her. “Weak, ineffective, fit only to be used and discarded. An anchor chain without weight.”

It’s painful to hear. They’re inside Sora’s dream, this is not the real Xehanort. So are these wounding words Sora’s thoughts? She knows he loves them, but is there some part of him way down deep that thinks these things? 

She can see the same question haunting Riku’s face. “It’s okay,” she says. “Sora knows the things that bother us - it makes sense his subconscious would have them come from Xehanort’s mouth. Sora knows he’s a liar.”

“Doesn’t - urgh,” he grunts as he smacks away another pouncing tiger, “doesn’t feel great, though, hearing it.”

“Weakling,” sneers Xehanort.

“Shut up,” says Riku.

“Waste of space,” Xehanort continues. His voice echoes in her ear, but she doesn’t answer, even though rage pulses through her, hot and red. She’s not going to waste her breath arguing with an imaginary man. 

When she looks out the windows, she can see they’re nearly to the top of the tower. Xehanort must be waiting up there. “Riku,” she says.

“Huh? What?”

“We ready for this?”

He leaps a wide gap in the stairwell. Komori, the only Spirit who sticks around while they’re trekking, flutters to a broken protrusion of stone above him and hangs there as Riku looks back at her. “Sure. We’ve beat him before.”

“This isn’t that Xehanort, though. It’s Sora’s nightmare version of him - he might have weird powers we’ve never seen.”

Riku taps Way to the Heart thoughtfully against his shoulder. “He won’t be powered up by Kingdom Hearts or the χ-blade, or his time-travel versions. I think that balances it out.”

“What I mean is, he comes from Sora’s heart. And no matter how much he’s gone through, how much it’s been battered and bruised and broke open, Sora’s got the strongest heart of anybody I’ve ever met. I think we should be prepared for a tough fight.”

Riku nods. “You’re right. You wanna take a break, heal up?”

Kairi hesitates. She doesn’t know what she wants, exactly. She (Sora) is so mad, it makes it hard to think. 

Her only real fight against the destructive fallen master had been terrifying. Training with Merlin’s animated crockery and Lea was nothing like the high-intensity showdown she’d found in the Keyblade Graveyard. She and Sora won against him, and she’s had a lot more combat experience since then, but the idea of facing Xehanort again is as frightening as an icy hand on her shoulder.

“Useless girl,” says Xehanort. “Die as you ought, whimpering and hesitant.” 

She takes a deep breath through her nose. For a man who doesn’t exist, he’s remarkably irritating. 

She has ethers and potions in her hoodie pockets. She tosses a pair to Riku, and drinks some herself, conserving her magic for what’s ahead. “Let’s keep going. I can’t wait to smash this guy’s face in.”

Riku smiles, sharp-edged. “Same here.”

The tower’s pinnacle is a round space, intricately tiled in jewel tones. The tiles form mosaics, but they blur out of focus when Kairi tries to pick out the design. A slender, two-tiered watchtower with a domed roof sits at the back of the tower, and Xehanort is standing on its second tier, framed dramatically by the stem-like pillars and the setting sun. A light wind picks up, blowing curtains of dust and making his black coat billow behind him.

“He is always on the tallest possible thing, isn’t he?” Riku asks.

She huffs out a laugh. Her fist is so tight around her keyblade’s handle that her knuckles are beginning to ache. 

Xehanort chuckles too, like rocks tossed in a meat grinder. “A keen observation, boy. One can see most clearly from on high. See that which is, and that which should be.” He points directly at the space between them. “A crucial gap yawns between you. A lack of understanding which will lead you to your fated endings: the darkness of death.”

“You’re wrong, old man,” Riku says calmly, though his hands are as white-knuckled as hers, and his Spirits are manifesting all around them, ready for battle. “We’ve beat you _and_ death before, and we’ll do it again, as often as we have to.”

“Riku,” she says. “He’s not real. There’s no point arguing with him.”

He startles at that, gives her a nonplussed look like he’d forgotten. 

“The girl is right,” says Xehanort. “There is little point in continuing this, when the end is so clear to all: your loss, and how it will destroy your lover Sora.” His hands twist as he speaks, and a ring of black surrounds Kairi and Riku, separating into pools of darkness, flat against the tiles. “After suffering such a grievous sorrow, he may never wake again.”

Kairi’s skin prickles. This Xehanort knows he’s only a dream? Sora must be aware, then, of what’s happening. Lucid dreaming. “Sora!” she shouts into the dusty air. “It’s okay! Whatever’s got a hold of you, we’ll beat it!”

Xehanort grins. “Will you now?”

The oozing pits around them bubble and seethe as though responding to his voice. The hungry ghost Nightmares bob up through the tarry darkness, wide open mouths first, then round unblinking eyes. Xehanort gestures at them, and their egg-shaped bodies contort, sprouting limbs, drooping hats splitting into long jagged antennae, glowing blue veins showing through their darkening skin, until the ring of Spirits has been replaced by a ring of Neoshadows. Their eyes remain reflective Nightmare red, not gleaming Heartless yellow. 

Riku’s Spirits shy away from them, as though unsure what to do with these strange enemies, but Kairi doesn’t wait for Xehanort to finish transforming them. She focuses, eyes flicking from one twisting monster to another, until the energy’s built, and she unleashes her shotlock. The glittering orbs of light don’t get all the Neoshadows - their nasty habit of diving into the ground and moving as a shadow saves about half of them. 

One pops up behind Riku, grabbing onto his left ankle. Kairi flings her keyblade at it. As soon as Destiny’s Embrace has left her hand, inky claws seize her wrist. Another Neoshadow has hold of her, and yanks her off balance. Her keyblade zips back to her, automatically tracking back to her hand, but she doesn’t have leverage to strike with it. She kicks the monster in the face instead. Her shoes are more combat boots than high-top sneakers, and the hit is solid, but the Neoshadow doesn’t let go. 

“Get off her!” Riku yells, and Rafe charges up, kicking the Neoshadow square in the chest with electric hooves, knocking it away from her. Riku flies in, hot on his heels, and slashes the ‘Heartless’ twice. Literally flies - blue aura shimmers around him and the batwings protruding from either side of his Dream Eater mark. 

The Neoshadows are racing all over the place, zipping across the tile and lashing out with their long claws. Kairi sets out dozens of mines, circles of light flat against the ground that explode as enemies cross them. It’s chaos. There’s not only her mines on the floor, but pools of noxious poison, and the air is full of firebombs, lightning bolts, and missiles from the Spirits.

Through the lightshow, she can see Xehanort, still watching from above. She wants to yank him down from that perch, throw him from the building, grind his face into the plaza dust. She sucks in a breath.

She _doesn’t_ want that. She likes the physical exertion of battle, but doesn’t relish causing harm, despite the bravado in her statements. Sora likes fighting for fighting’s sake, he’s competitive, but he doesn’t enjoy inflicting pain, either. She knows he doesn’t. But the notion of making Xehanort bleed still makes her fingers twitch, her heart beat fast. 

“Where is this coming from?” she mutters, dodging a pair of striking Neoshadows and calling down a crackling Thundaga on them. 

“There are none so blind,” says Xehanort’s voice behind her, and she whips around and leaps away, stumbling as she lands to avoid one of the bubbling poison traps. It came from the salamander Mina, and probably wouldn’t hurt her - but instinct still keeps her away from it. 

Xehanort holds out his right hand, crackling with an purple-hued orb of darkness. “Though those who will not speak must bear some portion of the blame.”

Kairi transforms Destiny’s Embrace into a lance and stabs it at him. He bats it casually away with his left, and flings the dark orb upward. The cloudless sunset sky seethes into stormy darkness, so suddenly Kairi is left blinking. Xehanort is a silhouette in front of her, backlit by the explosions of the battlefield. She dashes away to put some distance between them until her vision adjusts.

A Neoshadow, visible only because of its glowing eyes and veins, looms in front of her. “Light!” Kairi cries, and shoots a Pearl spell at it. The luminous sphere hits it squarely, and it staggers back. In the fading brightness of her spell, she looks around. Where’s Riku? Where’s Xehanort?

Riku’s surrounded by three of the ‘Heartless’. He’s spinning like a dervish, fighting them all off. She flings her keyblade that way, teleports herself to it. She throws it again in a tight Circle Raid, trying to hit all three foes. She gets two, and Riku’s done enough damage to them that they fade, but the third drops away, escaping. 

“No, you don’t!” Riku roars, and leaps up. His descent, slamming Way to the Heart into the tile, unleashes a shockwave of violet darkness that runs to the edges of the tower, peeling the hiding Neoshadows off the ground. “Now, Kairi!”

“Try this!” She pulls light out from the inexhaustible core inside her, so warm, and sends it out in spiraling golden pillars, grand magic. She doesn’t see whether it finishes off the Neoshadows - she spots Xehanort, and transforms Destiny’s Embrace to shoot an arrow of white light at him.

He pulls up a wall of stone that the arrow smashes through, but she loses track of him again. She doesn’t think she hit him.

There’s a blast of light and heat from above. She looks up. Sigils are appearing against the storm clouds. A rain of meteors comes from them, each stone nearly the size of the gummi ship. “Move!” she shouts. 

The meteors hit the tower, breaking the floor and the walls to pieces. She’s flung from her feet, slides down a piece of floor that’s quickly becoming vertical. She tucks her feet under her and jumps up, dodging broken masonry and a follow-up bombardment of smaller meteors. Lyda, the eagle, swoops past to avoid a hunk of burning stone. Kairi concentrates, thinks about gulls and tropical birds, the swell of air currents, about pixie dust. 

A pair of white wings unfurl behind her. It’s hard to maintain them, alone. They’re not physically connected to her, but using them leaves her back and shoulders sore afterward, and the spell is appropriately flighty and hard to hang on to.

She flutters up. She can track Riku circling bat-winged overhead, surrounded by his blue aura. There’s only jagged pillars of the tower remaining to stand on. She spies Xehanort on one of them, and glares. 

Columns of fire erupt around her. The backdraft sends her spinning, and she barely manages to land on one of the shorter tower pinnacles. She remembers where he was standing and shoots a Blizzaga that way, then takes off again, jinking and weaving. She can’t seem to get up to Riku’s height, or get near the Spirits. The fire columns block her. _Penning her in_ , she realizes. Is Xehanort trying to deal with the two of them separately?

When she lands back on the short tower, the fires nearest her stop moving, whirling in place. Kairi bites her lip with frustration. She is not _useless_ , she does not have to wait through fights and _hope_ anymore. There are spells being tossed around above her, battlecries ringing out. She closes her eyes. She draws a deep breath of oven-hot air, then pushes it out, out and out, forming a ring of wind around her. The cyclone draws in the flame pillars until it turns into a flickering fire tornado. She launches up, riding the rising heat. 

From well above the battle, she sees Riku and Xehanort exchanging blows. She dismisses her cyclone; the fire columns snap back into place below her. She pulls in her wings and dives. Down toward Xehanort, raising her keyblade. She can see the Nightmare emblem on his coat - he’s been careful not to show his back to her until now. Destiny’s Embrace sweeps toward him, trailing feathers and flowers.

He vanishes.

She has just enough time to halt her strike before it hits Riku instead. She pulls up. A cold hand lands on her shoulder, knots tight around the base of one wing. “NO!” she shouts, begins to twist away.

The blow lands right between her shoulder blades. The teeth of Luxu’s keyblade dig into her spine, more like an ax than a sword. Her body goes hot/cold, molten ice pouring through her nerves. She has just a moment of seeing Riku’s stricken expression, then

  
  


weightlessness, and void

  
  


Her heart beats. Her vision flickers black/red at the edges, her dragged-in breath aches in her lungs. Auto-life only keeps you from dying, it doesn’t cure.

Xehanort chuckles, sandpaper against raw meat. “One down…”

It’s like preparing her shotlock, everything seems drenched in honey, moving slow and golden. The rage goes through her, hot as lava, and fear like a blizzard beneath it, but it’s not hers. That’s never been what she draws her power from. She has time for this or a Curaga, but it’s not really a choice. By the time she healed herself, Xehanort would be reacting to her surviving the hit.

Her arms hang limp, Destiny’s Embrace beginning to slide out of her lax fingers. She pulls a little on the bond between her and it, and it resettles firmly in her palm. The air around her crystallizes into miniscule glassy stars, tiny dancing prisms that cast rainbows everywhere. Warmth like sunlight fills her up. She breathes out raggedly, feels Xehanort’s hand tighten around her wing as he realizes…

The star-crystals go nova. The whole world goes luminescent white. Even Kairi, at the center of it, the eye of this storm, is stunned, blinded, deafened.

But Riku can operate blind. 

As she’d hoped, she feels him land against her, wrap an arm around her. Way to the Heart whooshes over her shoulder, aimed at Xehanort’s heart. She feels it strike home, a ripple through the dark presence behind her. The hand around her wing loosens.

She loses the flight spell, and sags into Riku’s embrace. She can feel him fumbling for a cure spell, panicking. He gives up, tilts something cool and glassy against her lips. The caramel taste of an elixir floods across her tongue. She forces herself to swallow. Her eyes begin to clear, her ears stop ringing. 

Riku’s face is hovering over her. There’s something odd about his eyes. She blinks, trying to focus. He makes a choked noise as he sees she’s awake and pulls her closer, leaning his head against her shoulder. She raises a trembling hand, pats his soft, silver hair.

“Well done,” says a splintered voice behind her. Riku’s head snaps up. Kairi’s too tired to turn and look. She can feel well enough, Xehanort is beaten. The dark cloud of him is dissipating, like the Nightmare he is.

The fallen master continues, “And yet, the darkness below you is still so deep. Can you drop to the bottom of its abyss and come out unchanged? Can you come out at all?” He pauses, as though waiting for a response. Riku doesn’t engage with him this time. 

“In the end,” Xehanort sighs, his voice growing fainter, “despite the hopeful struggles of countless fools, despite the speeches and the battlecries, darkness remains the true nature of the heart. You will see so, though your own hearts may break at the sight.” His words are only a wisp in the air, and they fade completely at the same moment the sun sets at last, removing the last red/gold light from the air. 

Kairi and Riku are left perched on a stone pillar. It’s made of worn, weatherbeaten stone now, not anything ever shaped by human hands. The air is cool and grey around them. Stars peep through the parting clouds.

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	4. City

The stone under Riku sinks, like he’s standing in the shallows with the tide whirling sand out from under his feet. He looks down and sucks in a breath. The golden stone _is_ turning to sand and spinning out into the air, blowing away.

He falls, clutching Kairi to him. 

The stars start moving in wavering patterns, heading up. A soft, clattering noise carries through the night - beating wings. All the dots he thought were stars are white birds. They swirl around him. Through the storm of feathers, he can make out something below. It’s a ring of graven silver metal around a blue bubble. It must be the next gate.

Glowing data-lines like those in the Grid run over the bubble’s surface, circling around a lock icon. Riku shifts his grip around Kairi, hanging on with one arm. He summons his keyblade, points it at the bubble, and turns it. A beam of light shoots from its tip and strikes the lock. There’s a click, the lines grow brighter for a moment, then fade. The bubble swells as though the lock was keeping it constrained, until it almost touches the metal ring around it.

He falls through it. A nighttime city spreads out below him, stinking of asphalt and exhaust, glittering like a trove of dropped gemstones. He aims for a wide street, making a more controlled landing than he did in the desert.

At once, Nightmares appear - cats with six legs and bell-tipped ears, rhinos with drill-shaped horns. His Spirits show up in a ring, ready to fight. He looks down at Kairi. There are dark purple smudges of exhaustion under her closed eyes. Beneath her freckles, her skin seems moon-pale under the streetlamps.

“Kelly,” he says, and the rex stomps over. “Guard Kairi.” He lays her gently on the asphalt, and Kelly curls around her, tail to jaw.

He turns to the Nightmares and raises his keyblade. “Let’s make this quick.”

The cats stay back, swaying where they stand, eerie music floating out from them, but the rhinos paw the ground, snorting. They transform into spiked balls that bounce around the street and make the ground shake. 

Riku throws himself out of the way, toward a streetlight. He hooks his keyblade around the pole and spins toward a group of the cats, projecting a sharp-edged disc of dark magic around himself that slices through them and disrupts their spells. 

Kelly roars behind him. He whirls around. One of the rhinos, using its drill-like horn to dig, has _tunneled_ under her, coming out actually inside her ribcage. Kelly, curled around Kairi, won’t stand and leave the girl unguarded, but that means she can’t defend herself either.

He darts back toward her. Another rhino blocks his way, and he slingshots himself around it, using the momentum to throw it off its feet and himself closer to Kairi. He fires a Blizzara through the bars of Kelly’s ribs. The Nightmare inside breaks out of the ice in moments, continuing to batter away at the rex’s petrified spine. Kelly roars again, with a note of real misery in it.

 _Another damn rhino_ tunnels up beside him. Riku chops his blade toward it, but as with boney Bonnie earlier, stops himself in time. This violet and teal rhino has a Spirit mark on his forehead, and purple eyes. He snorts at Riku. 

“Come on!” he shouts, and links up with the Spirit, which vanishes, strength pouring into Riku. 

Wisps of pale aura trail like embers out of him as he slashes through the bars at the Nightmare. Streaks of white light echo his keyblade strikes, and the enemy staggers back, but it’s imprisoned and can’t get away. “How’d you like your own medicine?” Riku growls, leaping into the air. He lands with anvil force, the asphalt under him crumbling as a shockwave of light rushes out from Way to the Heart. 

The red-eyed Nightmares all around are bowled over by the attack. The rhinoceros, with nowhere to go, tumbles over in place. Mina, the salamander, swims up in a pool of darkness and deals the last hit. 

Riku turns, taking in the scene. His Spirits are finishing off the Nightmares. He fires off another Blizzara at a cat that’s creeping up on Cob, but that’s all that’s left. He lets loose of his link with Sai, who reappears next to him. There’s a discordant ‘ _mew’_ beside him, and Cho, his version of the six-legged cats, smooths herself against his pant legs, tail curled up in a question mark. 

Kelly makes an unhappy grumbling noise and stands with an effort. Riku’s about to heal her, but Komori and the tiger Tia take care of it for him. Instead of crowding up to him as they usually do after a fight, anticipating a snack, the Spirits make a circle around Kairi’s prone form. 

He steps over Mina and scoops Kairi back into his arms. She feels warm and solid, like she’s just sleeping, and despite the flickering fluorescent streetlights, she already looks less washed out than she did minutes ago.

“Hey,” he says to his creatures. “Can somebody find a place for us to rest?”

They chirp and roar and warble and scatter down different streets. He waits, holding Kairi and swaying a little on his feet. He feels full of static, unable to focus. “Dear heart,” he whispers to her. “Come on back.”

She mumbles, a bare thread of noise, but tension drains out of him, hearing it. 

Bonnie comes back first, swimming in loops to indicate her excitement. He follows her through the orderly streets. The neon signs around him waver and blur, reflecting up off the damp pavement. He squints, trying hard not to lose track of the bony fish in the sea of lights.

There’s nothing living here. No trees planted along the sidewalk, no weeds coming up through the cracks. No litter either, blowing paper and plastic, cigarette butts, or abandoned bottles. An empty city.

But there is a hotel.

The lobby is all pillars of polished marble and mirrored walls, an infinity of reflections. Looking at it makes him queasy. He closes his eyes and follows the scent of flowing air to a hallway. The walls here are covered in cream and gold wallpaper and much easier on the eyes. The nearest door is locked. He opens it with his keyblade.

It’s a normal room inside, two beds, a nightstand and a dresser, a minifridge and bar. He lays Kairi down atop a burgundy comforter. She snuggles her face into the pillows. He calls his Dream Eaters back - the largest ones, Sai and Kelly, appear and poof away at once, the room too small for them.

The others cuddle up around Kairi on the bed while he uses the washroom and puts the contents of the cooler into the minifridge. He goes back to lie down and has to shove Cho and Mina out of the way so he can fit onto the bed. He puts an arm over Kairi. Rafe is lying down between the wall and the bed, resting his head on the mattress behind her, and Riku’s hand dangles at the perfect height to scratch his horns. Cho hops onto Riku’s hip with a jealous ‘ _mew_ ’, and squirms into the space between him and Kairi before curling up and purring. Mina makes herself comfortable across Riku’s calves. Komori hangs from the headboard, Bonnie settles at the foot of the bed, Cob and Tab are already asleep beside the pillows. Tia pats Riku gently with one huge paw.

“No,” he yawns. “No room. Sleep on the other one. You’ll be fine.”

She gives a complaining ‘ _yawrp_ ’, then leaps onto the bed across from them, which creaks sharply at the sudden weight. The eagle, Lida, waiting patiently in a corner, shuffles over and clambers up with Tia, fluffing her feathers before settling.

 _Do they dream when they sleep?_ Riku wonders. He does, even as a Dream Eater. _How does that work, anyway?_ _What would they dream of?_ And while he’s musing about it, he falls asleep.

He wakes up with a jerk - he’s being smothered, he can’t breathe! He shoves at the heavy thing on top of him, which falls away with a gruff sound of surprise, and sucks in air. Beside him, Cho complains about the sudden movement, and Mina’s fallen onto her back beside his knees, waving her own little legs in the air as she tries to right herself. He reaches down to give her a hand.

Next to the bed, Tia heaves herself back to her feet, striped fur all ruffled. Riku sighs as she gives him an affronted glare. “I told you,” he says, “sleep on the other bed.” His voice seems to wake the others up. Rafe’s head on its long neck rises, long-lashed eyes blinking sleepily. Tab swims into the air and toward the door, impatient as always. And Kairi -

Kairi stirs, yawns, sits up, stretching out her arms. “Is it morning?” she mumbles.

Woozy with relief, he leans over and takes her face between his hands. “You’re alright!” He leans in for a kiss, but she jerks away and scrambles out of the bed - the remaining Spirits are jostled around by this and hop to the floor, vocalizing their displeasure - Kairi _summons her keyblade_ and stares at him, her eyes showing their whites.

“Who are you?” she demands. “What’ve you done to Riku?”

He stays still. “I’m Riku. I haven’t changed, have I?”

Her hands tighten around the blade’s hilt. Her eyes trace his face, then glance around at the Spirits. Tia and Cho are grooming themselves, unconcerned. Mina is snuffling hopefully at the fridge. Lida is a ball of green and yellow feathers on the other bed, crested head just peeking above the floof and eyes blinking drowsily. Bonnie floats to Kairi and bumps her shoulder, as though to reassure her. She lowers her keyblade and comes back toward him, reaching out to touch his face lightly.

“Sorry - I was just… startled.” She sits on the edge of the bed, dismissing Destiny’s Embrace. “What happened to your eyes?” 

“Nothing,” he says, confused. “You conked out and we fell into the next layer of dream, fought some Nightmares, and napped for a while.”

She touches his face again, tracing a finger along the top of his cheek up to the corner of his right eye. “Something’s happened, though. I thought you were possessed. Your eyes are yellow.”

“Huh?”

She nods. He stands and slips into the washroom. He was too tired to look before, but it’s true. His irises are yellow. He doesn’t blame her for thinking he was possessed - that’s exactly what it looks like. 

But he’s still him. From past experience, he’s certain. There’s nobody else in his head with him, no strange voices, no corrupted ghost clinging to his heart like a shadow. He steps back out.

“I know what happened. I’m a Dream Eater, too.” He raises a hand, touches a closed eyelid. “My disposition must’ve changed. Yellow tends to indicate a fight or flight response.”

“That must be it,” she says. “I noticed it right before I passed out.”

“Yeah. That was scary, Kairi. What kind of move _was_ that?”

She shifts on the bed. “A Limit Break. Xion taught me. It was my first time really using it.”

“A Limit Break.” He’s seen the former Nobodies use theirs. He didn’t realize other people could use them too. “Don’t… You have to be on your last legs to use those, don’t you?”

Kairi nods and holds her hand out to him. He takes it and sits beside her.

“Almost all our other magic comes from our hearts. Limit Breaks… are different. They come from the soul, the last gasp of the living self.”

He shivers. 

“It’s okay, it worked out,” she says. “And, hey, now I know how it works in real combat!”

His voice knots into a ball halfway up his throat, and his protest that it’s _not okay_ comes out a strangled choke. Komori flutters over and lands awkwardly on the bed, cuddling up against his side. The others stop what they’re doing and look on with concern. Cho looks silly, three legs in the air, but he can’t even twitch his mouth into a smile.

He was right there, right beside her, and he still couldn’t keep her from getting hurt. Almost every action he’s taken since age fifteen has been focused toward protecting his friends, protecting _her,_ and he couldn’t keep her safe.

She knows what he’s getting at anyway, even if he can’t spit it out. Her hand clenches in his, and she wraps the other one around his shoulder, shaking him a little. “It worked out,” she says forcefully. “And that’s thanks to you. I knew what the effects were going to be, and I knew you could fight through them. I would’ve come up with something else otherwise.”

His breath hitches. He knows he screwed up, even letting it get to that point. “How can you... have so much faith in me?”

“You…” Kairi’s eyes squinch up and her mouth hangs open. She looks away for a moment, shaking her head. “You’re being dumb. How many times have you saved me? Or Sora?”

“I haven’t -”

“Even when we’re apart, you’re always helping us, from behind the scenes or from worlds away. How can I _not_ have faith in you? You’re strong and kind and you’ve always come through for me. For us!” She kisses him, fierce and quick. He pulls away and she lets him, but she keeps talking.

“So you didn’t get it exactly right the first try, is that what you’re kicking yourself over? So what! Big deal! You know how many times I’ve messed up! There’ve been so many times I couldn’t help myself, never mind anybody else! And I took those lessons to heart, and I learned, and I got better, but I know I’ll mess up again someday, because I’m just a person, and I can’t do everything right all the time!”

“I know,” he says. “But -”

Her words tumble over him. Her face is flushed, eyes wide and shining. “So?! If you know, and you like me anyway, and you forgive me anyway, then give yourself the same courtesy! It’s alright to screw up! We come back from it, every time!” She kisses him again, and he tastes salt in it this time. Tears, and the ocean.

“It’ll always be alright,” she says, running her hands up along his cheeks, into his hair. “We will always make it right.”

He reaches up, holds her face between his hands. She looks steadily at him despite her tears, unafraid of his eerie yellow eyes. 

“What did you say to me earlier? We all die someday, but we don’t want it to happen too soon? You almost died today. You have to let me be afraid of that.”

She shakes her head, her hair twisting under his fingers. “I don’t have to let you blame yourself, though. You’re changing the argument.”

“Are we arguing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t want to. So, you win.”

She frowns a little. “Don’t just say that. I want you to listen to me -”

“I am. I’m afraid, but I’m listening.”

Her frown eases, but doesn’t go away. He’s not trying to evade her point - he does have a history of taking on more guilt than rightfully belongs to him. But he doesn’t think that he’s wrong to blame himself for this, exactly. “I hear you. I’ll treat this as a learning experience. And _I won’t let it happen again_.”

“Good enough,” she says. “For now.” She leans forward, just enough for their lips to brush. He tilts his head, deepens the kiss. Her lips are chapped, and she still tastes faintly and sweetly of mango.

She breaks away, Komori _cheep_ ing as the mattress shifts under her. “Oh! They changed again!”

“What?” he asks, disoriented by the change in subject, and disappointed by the loss of her mouth.

“Your eyes. They’re purple now.”

He touches under his eye again, then moves toward her. “Guess you cheered me up.” He’s ready for another kiss, but she tilts back and away, eyes sparkling with curiosity and a little mischief.

“Is that what purple is? Cheer? Happiness?”

“No,” he sighs and pretends to lose interest.

She leans in, poking him in the stomach. “Tell me. I wanna -”

He turns his head and seizes a quick kiss, sliding his mouth over hers and along her jaw. “Affection,” he murmurs into her ear.

“You sap,” she teases, but he can feel her pulse pounding in her throat, the flush in her cheek next to his. If they were home, and not surrounded by Spirits, if everything were alright, he’d….

But they’re not, and he’d better stop now.

He stands, stretching. Komori flies up, circling his head. “Wanna eat before we head out?”

“Uh. Yeah.” She stands too, straightening her sleep-ruffled clothes, and steps into the bathroom. “Lemme wash up.”

Riku forgot to pack utensils in the cooler, so they eat macaroni salad and the last of the kalua pork with their fingers. The Spirits don’t really need to eat, as many Nightmares as they’ve consumed, but he tosses cakes, cookies, and chocolates out for them anyway. They scarf the sweets down, then stare intensely, not-quite-begging for more. (Well, Mina begs, trying to climb up to his lap.) He distracts them by releasing balloons for them to play with while he and Kairi finish eating.

They wash up. As they step into the hallway, the Dream Eaters besides Komori vanish. He asks, “Can you sense Sora here? What he’s feeling?” The ocean smell he’s followed is almost gone, buried here by the city miasma, steam and pavement and garbage.

“Mmm. He’s still mad. And afraid. But… he’s sad, too?”

They step out into the mirrored lobby. He’s less tired, so it’s not as dizzying as before, but there are still too many reflections. He and Kairi appear at every angle, walking towards themselves, walking upside down, walking away.

There’s one reflection that doesn’t match. A boy in a black coat, going out the hotel doors. His face isn’t visible in the mirror, but his hood is down. His hair is dark golden blond and spiky.

“Roxas!” they both shout, and run after him, bursting out into the street.

A red spotlight locks onto Riku. He hears the shimmering, metallic noise of Dream Eaters appearing - his own Spirits, and a bunch of Nightmares. Horned owls, their red eyes sending out beams of light, and dark purple goats with stiff horse-like manes and massive antler-like horns. “Drift,” he growls, and lifts them out of the way with a Zero Graviga spell.

Kairi yells, “There!”, and points. Roxas is turning a corner two blocks away. 

“He’s fast,” Riku says, and races after him. He hexes Nightmares out of the way, not bothering to fight them. If that’s Roxas, then…

A goat runs alongside him, magenta with yellow spiral markings on its shoulders and hips. “Bey,” he says, and points ahead. “Catch up to that boy!” The goat takes off, charging head down for greater speed. Riku’s owl spirit should be around here, too. He slows momentarily, looking for him. “Peppo!”

The owl appears overhead and whistles inquisitively. Peppo’s not speedy, but if he can lock onto Roxas, he can track him and direct the rest of the Spirits toward him. Did Roxas not see or hear them? Why hasn’t he stopped?

He sprints after Bey, block after block. Until he gets to an intersection in front of a towering skyscraper, its upper stories swathed in smog. Bey is darting around, springing one way then another, head swiveling. 

“Lost him, huh?” Riku pants.

Kairi catches up. She bends over, planting her hands on her knees and breathing hard. “Was… that… really… Roxas?”

“Dream version,” Riku says. “I know.” He doesn’t need the reminder this time, that it’s all not real, even though Roxas is fast in reality, too. Talking to Xehanort was not necessarily helpful, but Roxas, even a dream version of him, might have something useful to tell them.

If they can catch up to him.

Remembering his last fight in a dark city with Roxas, he glances up the skyscraper. It’s not the same building, all flat mirrored windows instead of black steel and art deco flourishes. But there is a sort of outside observation deck a third of the way up, and someone looking over the edge of it. No, perched on the railing, casually, with one leg dangling. Someone with shoulder-length silver hair, and a bodysuit of twisted fibers. Even from this distance, he stinks of darkness.

Riku frowns so sharply that his face hurts. That’s either him from years ago, or Oku back when he was ‘only’ the Riku Replica.

He gathers himself and leaps, flipping in the air and landing with feet against the glass to push off again. Flowmotion’s body-cloaking aura lets him stick just long enough, push off with just enough force to hop his way up the building. He lands on the terrace. It’s got tables with umbrellas and chairs, and the boy has vanished. 

As Kairi lands beside him, he sees a flicker of white at the far end of the balcony. It’s Naminé, slipping through a glass door. She’s visible for a moment on the other side, walking away down a dim corridor, her white dress fading into the greyness.

“Naminé!” He runs a few steps after her, until Kairi snags his arm and drags him to a halt. His momentum spins him to face her. “What!” he barks.

Temper flares in her eyes and her mouth screws up, but she takes a deep breath and speaks calmly. “They keep vanishing as soon as we catch up. I don’t think,” she closes her eyes, sighing, “that we’ll be able to talk to them, so there’s no point running ourselves ragged chasing them.”

He looks over his shoulder. There’s no sign now of her sister. “But they’ll probably lead us where we should go.”

“Maybe so. But their timing’s convenient, yeah? I think they’ll be just ahead of us, no matter how fast or slow we chase after them.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and lets go of him. “What I wonder is, what’s the significance of them appearing here? They’re not enemies, like Xehanort. They’re all our friends.”

Riku leans his head back, rolls his shoulders, exhales. “Maybe… hidden memories? Sora’s got boatloads of them. They’re not even all his.”

She looks pensive. “Maybe so. But it… doesn’t feel like that to me.” Her hand rises, pulling at the air, as if she can grab the words she needs out of the aether. “He’s so sad, and it comes from… his sense of empathy.” Then her hand knots and pulls in toward her chest. “And he’s scared. I can’t tell where that comes from, exactly. It’s cold, and all tangled up.”

“He never talks about this stuff,” Riku sighs. “I wonder if even he knows where it comes from.”

They go inside. The walls are made of a dull silvery metal, and their reflections are faint and blurred, sliding along like echoes from another worldline. Naminé’s reflection is at the end of the corridor, turning a corner.

“Looks like you were right about the timing,” he says. 

They follow her. It’s like following a ghost. The eeriness isn’t helped by the blandness of the building. Whatever this place is, it’s got a weird half-finished feel to it. There are glass doors leading into bare rooms. No furniture. Nothing on the walls. Riku doesn’t smell anything that suggests people have ever been in here.

He sees a treasure chest inside one of the empty rooms, gleaming black metal with grey lines. The figment he takes out is midnight blue and cold to the touch. It expands as he picks it up; he remembers the sterile silence of Castle Oblivion, and Oku snarling as he draws Soul Eater. His fury burns Riku’s ears. _“As long as you’re around, I’ll never be more than a shadow!”_

“Not true,” he says, and the memory bursts. “What’d you think of?” he asks Kairi.

She wraps her arms across her front, clutching her elbows. “Meeting Naminé, in the World that Never Was. Taking her hand. Pieces clicking into place.”

“That’s a good memory, though, isn’t it?”

“Mm. It… felt _right._ At the time. And then, the more distant from that moment I was, the more I could faintly feel Naminé, still existing inside me, but not able to interact, with me, or with anything… the more that moment seemed, somehow, like giving up.” She glances up at him. “How ‘bout you?”

The figment’s numbing his hand. He consumes it. It tastes oily, and he rubs his fingers together, feeling like there’s a grease residue on his skin. Pins and needles prickle in his palm. “Fighting Oku, back in Castle Oblivion. He was yelling at me about being ‘a phony’.”

“So, not really a good memory for you.”

He shakes out his hand. “Let’s move on.”

There’s an intersection ahead, three hallways to choose from. He looks for another dream-person to follow, but all three corridors are empty.

“Shoot,” Kairi sighs. “Maybe I was wrong about them appearing right when we need -”

Xion, black coat and short black hair, walks into view down one of the halls.

“ - or not.” Kairi blinks, nonplussed.

Xion actually seems to hear them. Her head twitches toward them, then she takes off running.

“Keep up!” Riku shouts. Xion’s fast, but he and Kairi are both a little faster, at least in foot races on the island. 

She leads them to an open space, a huge spiral silver staircase that runs up past glassed-in meeting rooms and empty galleries. He can hear her feet tapping on the steps above them, smell the leather of her coat and the faint, sweet, chamomile smell that’s uniquely hers.

As they run, movement flickering in the glass catches his attention. Visions are reflected there, whole tableaus that don’t match the grey building they’re in. He sees them from the corners of his eyes, each image only lasting a few moments. If he stops to look more closely, they vanish at once.

A rocky desert, with Master Terra’s armor lying in rusted pieces across it. Roxas, falling from a tower, silhouetted against the sunset. Xion standing on thin air in her armor, small blue flowers falling from her hands, tears falling from her eyes.

Namine, curled up asleep inside a white birdcage. Kairi, sleeping inside a glass bottle that rolls in the tidal foam. (Kairi makes a startled noise at that one, so he knows they’re seeing the same things.) Ventus sleeping in a field of dandelions, seeds blowing into the air like a snowstorm in reverse.

Master Aqua falling through a rain of gemstones or colored glass, her face reflecting in a rainbow of hues in each piece. Vanitas walking across a cobbled street, leaving tarry footprints behind him. A meteor shower on the islands, and Oku on the beach, clutching his yellow star lucky charm.

Master Ava’s fox mask, fallen to pieces on a table covered with moldering books and scattered parchment scrolls. Ephemer on his knees, surrounded by broken keyblades. Riku himself, standing thigh-deep in the ocean with a curling wave mounting behind him. A crystal statue of Yozora surrounded by stars and reflective water.

The statue of Yozora bursts. Crystal shards fly out and strike Riku. He raises his arm protectively over his eyes. Behind him, Kairi says, “Ouch!”

Yozora, face calm and still, stands in front of them on the stairs, his crossbow pointed straight down. He shoots. The stairs fracture at the point of impact, then shatter. 

Riku begins to fall. Komori whistles by his ear. He links with her and then with Rafe. Wind wraps around him, blue aura shines through his skin. The muscles in his back and shoulders contract and shift as his wings appear, and he turns his fall into a dive, then pulls up, beats upward again through a shower of tinkling glass pieces. Yozora, or the dream of him, is gone.

Kairi has her flight spell going too, no linking necessary. She complains, though. “I am gonna be so sore after all this.”

“Cure -” he breaks off to cast a barrier as a chunk of staircase plunges past him “- Cure doesn’t fix it?”

She shakes her head. “No. Aches from casting magic can’t be fixed by magic.”

“Bummer.” None of his spells are like that. Even with the ones that cost a lot of effort or energy to cast, there’s no blowback.

“Yeah - look out!”

They’re past the rain of glass, but now Nightmares blossom into the empty space around them. The owls again, and red-eyed pegasi that cloak themselves in cyclones and charge at them. Only some of his Spirits show up to fight them. Bonnie and Tab, Cob, Lida, and Peppo, and he’s already linked with Komori - the ones that can fly or float.

He has to be careful as he dodges. The jagged remains of the staircase jut out from a central pillar and from balconies. They gleam sharply, lit by the Spark spells the pegasi cast. The flying horses are weak to darkness, he remembers, and the owls to light. He leaps at them in spinning charges, dousing his keyblade in dark energy, then reversing the spin and the spell, and plunges through them with light flickering along Way to the Heart’s edges.

“Illuminate!” Kairi shouts, and casts her own Sparkga, loops of rainbow crystals whirling out from her.

Riku and Sora’s pegasus Spirit, Paige, is here now, swooping around her opposite numbers. They’ve taken out most of the owls. The pegasi are more mobile, and dodge a lot of the hits.

He can feel his link time is nearly up. They’ve got to finish this quickly. He grits his teeth and focuses, eyes tracking from equine to equine, as his shotlock builds up. Dozens of dark-blue flames spit from his keyblade and home in on the enemies. The initial burst of fire leaves a burning orb floating in front of him. He strikes it, sending out fewer but larger projectiles, once, twice, three times. The last hit splits the orb into three pieces that crawl through the air like miniature blue suns until they get a set distance from him and explode, destroying the last two Nightmares.

They’re almost to the top of the building, the last open balcony around the stairwell. Riku flings himself onto the short grey carpet just as the link wears out. Rafe and Komori reappear beside him, drooping with tiredness. He gives them each a royal cake, a deluxe reward for hanging in there so well, and dismisses them.

When the bat spirit isn’t available to be his travel companion, one of the others appears in her place. He doesn’t know what kind of negotiations go on ‘backstage’ between them, but when Tia poofs into place beside him, looking smug, he can only assume force of personality plays into it. And weight class, maybe.

The walls up here are even plainer than those below, dull and utilitarian, with slender pipes running near the ceiling. There’s only one door, with black, blocky, spray-painted letters on it: ROOF ACCESS.

They let themselves out. The roof extends flatly about thirty meters out, scattered with boxy HVAC units and crawling pipes, then ends with a tall concrete wall that circles the building. 

Riku frowns. “Wasn’t this building rectangular when we walked in?”

She sounds distracted. “Riku, look. A ladder.”

He turns around. The door they came out of is set in a broad curved wall, one story high. A metal ladder is welded onto it. “Up we go, I guess.”

“Hold on one sec…” says Kairi, digging in her pockets. “Ethers, and potions, just in case.” He takes two of the bottles from her, even though he didn’t get hit on the way here and doesn’t really need healing. Potions smell the same as Cure spells do, resinous and green, but they have a faintly chemical taste, so Riku drinks the green liquid before the blue one. Ethers taste like sugar and carbonation, and always leave a ticklish feeling in his sinuses.

He doesn’t bother with the ladder, jumping to the top with one use of Doubleflight, and freezes with shock. Kairi and Tia land beside him, staring.

The roof is round and flat white, ringed by thirteen white chairs of different heights. Seated in the very lowest one is Ventus, his feet dangling above the floor, his head nodding on his chest.

Riku’s seen something way too like this before. His teeth snap together, his keyblade smashes into his grip like a door slamming open. He stalks forward. Ventus _blurs_ as though he’s made of heat haze. Now it’s Sora, sitting, sleeping. Riku runs the last few steps and grabs his hand. “Sora! Sora, wake up!”

“Riku…” Kairi says.

“We’re here now! C’mon, c’mon, wake up!” He shakes Sora by the shoulder.

Kairi’s voice gets worried and high. “I don’t think it’s him! His feelings… They come from somewhere else.”

Riku glances over his shoulder at her, back down at Sora. This smells like him, sea salt and bright island sunshine. His pulse beats steadily in his wrist under Riku’s fingers.

His eyelashes, thick and dark, resting on ashy cheeks, flutter and come open. Riku drops his hand. It’s Sora’s familiar face, but his eyes are bright red - sclera, iris, pupil, - and translucent. Made of crystal.

Riku twists to the side, barely dodging a stabbing Kingdom Key. He stumbles back as the boy - no, the Nightmare, Riku can smell it now - leaps to his feet and balances on the arched back of the chair. The Kingdom Key doubles and splits, so he holds one in each hand, then the blades transform into Oathkeeper and Oblivion, without keychains. 

Riku sucks in a breath. His chest feels like he inhaled chunks of glass, flying up the staircase. He’s fought things that look like Sora before. He’s fought _Sora_ before. But however much his nose tells him this is an enemy, his eyes say different.

The stance, balancing on the balls of his feet with his raised right arm drawn back more than his left. The way his tousled hair sways in the wind. Even the competitive grin quirking his mouth. It’s all Sora.

But then… something about the grin shifts and changes. The crystal eyes turn from red to smoky yellow. Darkness spreads like ink in a crescent from his feet, pooling in each chair. Shapes writhe up from the pools, flickering through a dozen Nightmare forms before coalescing into… Floods. An Archraven, a Scrapper, a Mandrake. A Sonic Blaster, a Chrono Twister, an Axe Flapper. Jellyshades, and a Vile Phial. A baker’s dozen of Vanitas’ Unversed.

“What is this?” Riku growls. 

“Don’t know,” Kairi answers, settling into a fighting stance beside him. “Don’t care. We’ve got to get through this thing so we can reach the real Sora.” Despite her tough words, her eyes are fixed, like his, on the face that still looks so much like Sora’s. Her mouth is a thin, worried line.

The Unversed leap from their perches. Riku calls up the rest of his Spirits. They need no direction to take on the mob while he and Kairi focus on the Sora-Nightmare.

It leaps down, spinning both keyblades at them. They dodge away. The tips of Oblivion and Oathkeeper slam into the ground, leaving splintered impact marks. It glares up - it’s eyes have changed again, to vivid, transparent blue. It charges at him with a flurry of strikes, the two blades moving in smooth tandem. He can’t get a hit in. It’s all he can do to block each strike.

“Leave him alone!” Kairi yells. Destiny’s Embrace flies in, trailing sparkles of light. The Nightmare dodges it - no, blinks out of view. Appears again, sliding in behind Kairi, crossing its arms across itself, its keyblades glowing. Oblivion radiates darkness, Oathkeeper light. Its charge knocks Kairi into the air. She cries out as the linear blast of energy left in its wake sears her skin.

Fury pounds through Riku as he dashes to her side. She recovers, flips in the air and cures herself, while he spews dark fireballs that arc into the sky before crashing to the floor, leaving burning pits wherever they hit. 

The Nightmare turns into a ball of light, jumping from one patch of unburnt floor to the next. Every time it lands, it lets out a slender pillar of white energy, topped with a trident-like emblem, that homes in on either Riku or Kairi.

They dodge frantically around the arena. “Do these attacks seem familiar to you?” he shouts.

“Yeah. They’re -” She breaks off to deal with the Archraven swooping at her.

The Sora-Nightmare appears right next to Riku, taking him by surprise. The keyblades slice into him in a flurry, each hit landing with bruising force. Something _cracks_ , and a burning pain races through his neck and left shoulder. Through the whirling blades, he’s close enough to see its face again. Its eyes are ruddy purple now.

As soon as its combo ends, he raises an unsteady Way to the Heart into its face. Lets loose with a vengeful burst of dark energy that knocks it to the far end of the roof. It almost slides over the edge, but catches itself on the base of one of the tall chairs.

He doesn’t give it a chance to recuperate, even though there’s blood trailing down his right arm and his left arm hangs limp at his side and his chest feels like there’s hot iron bands wrapped around it. He dashes across the arena, smashes into it with his own flurry of blows. It’s backed against the chair and can’t get away from his Ars Solum. Each hit connects with a sound like ringing porcelain and spiderweb cracks appear across its body everywhere he hits. He pulls his arm back for the last strike, darkness floating like flower petals in the air around him. It looks at him. Its mouth wobbles. The face around the inhuman crystal eyes wrinkles like it’s about to cry, and his strike hesitates.

Its eyes change back to yellow. Fire erupts between them. Riku jerks away, coughing. The Nightmare teleports away in a black sphere, blinking into view in the middle of the arena to let loose two blasts of flame. The lower tracks across the ground right for him; the higher one splits into seven smaller orbs that race toward Kairi.

“You want fire?” she screams at it. “Have some!” She points her keyblade right at the oncoming fireballs. “Mega Flare!” A tide of white fire rips out from her, rolling over everything in its path, unstoppable. Riku casts a hurried Curaga while Mega Flare washes over him like a warm breeze, smelling of burning iron and cherrywood.

The enemy sways where it stands. Its skin, its clothes are blistered and peel off in strips like paint, revealing translucent flashes of white crystal underneath. It stomps one foot. Its eyes flicker to green, the fresh color of new leaves. The keyblades vanish and reappear floating behind it like wings. Three transparent, glittering copies of Oathkeeper on the right, three transparent, glimmering copies of Oblivion on the left.

It rises into the air and holds out its hands like a musician. Three tornadoes of green wind spring up, whirling across the roof. Indiscriminate, they suck up the Spirits and remaining Nightmares. Riku dashes away, into open air and up, up, until he lands atop the tallest chair. The tornadoes don’t quite reach this high.

Kairi’s got her flight spell active again, beating desperately away from the dragging winds. “Up here!” he shouts and she struggles toward him. He leans down and catches her hand, pulling her up to stand beside him.

“These attacks,” she pants. “They’re not Sora’s.”

He answers grimly. “No. It’s been Roxas, Xion, Vanitas, and Ventus, so far.”

“Let’s not give him a chance to use anybody else.” She turns to him, holds their linked hands up between them. “Let’s finish this.” A light pulses between their palms, shining pink through the flesh. Way to the Heart resonates with it, a steady draw in and out, like breathing, or the tide.

His hand tightens around hers. “Good idea.”

They both hold their keyblades to the sky. Light gathers around Kairi, darkness gathers around him. A single wing springs from each of their backs. His is gleaming dark purple, spiked and leathery. Hers is made of radiant golden feathers. 

The contrasting energies mass at the tips of their keyblades, a sphere of darkness, a sphere of light. They swing them down and fire the magic at the Nightmare. The golden energy and the violet spiral around each other, smashing through the protective barrier of green wind. The Nightmare’s pinned down by the blast.

Riku and Kairi dive down toward it, hands still linked. He dismisses Way to the Heart for now, she does the same with Destiny’s Embrace. He reaches out, grabs a smoked-glass copy of Oblivion from the enemy. The blade firms in his grip, becoming solid. Its black iron crown keychain appears in a burst of light.

Beside him, Kairi raises Oathkeeper high. Slices it down, trailing golden radiance. He slices across with Oblivion, pouring chill darkness through the blade. Chunks of crystal break off the enemy as the combined blows hit it. 

“This is it!” Kairi cries.

“Be gone,” Riku says.

From their still-joined hands, light bursts out, and darkness like smoke. The darkness isn’t polluting the light, the light isn’t erasing the darkness. They’re together, intertwined, more powerful in their union than apart. The magic twirls around the enemy, soaks into it… then explodes. Crystal fragments shower through the air like glitter. Riku turns his face away, pulls Kairi’s head into his chest, protecting her.

At last, the Nightmare creaks to a halt. It doesn’t look like Sora anymore. It barely looks human, all made of splintered edges, holding two long crystal shards in its lumpy hands. But the eyes are unbroken. They’re still shaped like Sora’s eyes, wide open and long-lashed. Looking at them makes Riku want to scream, so he glances at Kairi instead.

Tear tracks run through the silver dust on her face. Her mouth wobbles as she meets his eyes. “I don’t like this,” she says. “This is only a Nightmare, but it still comes from him. If some part of him feels this fragile, this breakable…”

“We better hurry,” Riku answers. His Spirits gather around them, looking ragged. He avoids the Nightmare’s frozen gaze as he puts his right hand on its chest, slick and cold. It gets more and more translucent as he consumes it, but it’s large, and the process seems to take forever. Pain creeps up his arm, like a cold wind blowing into his bones, and he braces himself, wrapping his left hand around his wrist.

Static fuzzes in his ears, and the faint scent-trace of the ocean fades away, replaced by….

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	5. Castle

Riku collapses like a stone, his Spirits crying out with alarm. Kairi dives after him, gets her hand under his skull just in time for her knuckles to get smashed against the metal floor. The building cracks around them, a spiderweb with them at the epicenter. The cracks radiate out, not just through the metal and glass, but up into the air.

The Spirits poof away just as the world shatters into bits, dropping Kairi and the unconscious Riku back into the blue void of the frozen whirlpool. She clutches him tightly as they fall. Hysterical laughter bubbles in the back of her throat before she swallows it. How many times has this ever happened? Riku is always the strong one. Usually if someone’s unconscious, it’s her or Sora, and Riku looking after them.

Something prickles the hair on the back of her neck - a coppery sense of heat and speed. She whirls midair.

Meteors! And not a pretty shower to _ooh_ and _aah_ over on a summer night as they streak across the island skies - no, she’s in the direct flight path of burning balls of rock that will break her bones if they hit her.

Kairi sucks in a breath, then forces herself to breathe it out slowly. This is no time for panic. She orients herself downward again. Like before, there’s a gate below her. It’s a ring of lilac-tinted stonework around a vivid green bubble this time. She pushes magic outward from her, urgency and speed and heaviness, anything to fall faster. She can feel the fire from a meteorite creeping up on her, hear it like a firework screaming through the air. She whirls out of its path, and the next, but soon she’s in the thick of them. She spins this way and that, Riku heavy in her arms. Everything smells like molten metal and there are green streaks across her vision every time she blinks, bright echoes of the meteors.

The gate’s getting closer. The meteors hit its surface and shatter, turning to sprays of fiery gravel. She brings up a barrier to shield herself from the rebounds.

She’s through! The bubble swallows her up, a sudden coolness like slipping underwater on a humid day.

There’s a castle below her, great tall towers, and vast ornamental gardens, and a cobblestoned town of timber houses, all lit by the pink light of dawn. She lands in a flagged courtyard near the castle gates. Decorative squares of greenery are overgrowing their beds, and petals and leaves are scattered across the worn stones. 

There are hot, sharp aches in both her legs. She sags to her knees, sliding Riku’s head to rest in her lap. She looks down at her left boot, then at her right. Their rubber soles are partly melted, and there are blistered pink welts on her calves where she didn’t put enough distance between her and the meteorites. Her skirt is scorched, too, with holes like cigarette burns that her black shorts show through.

“Cura,” she murmurs, and vines twine together above her head. There’s a sensation like soft leaves brushing over her skin, and the welts vanish. “Mend,” she says, and the soles of her shoes bubble and reform. Lilac threads spin across the burns in her skirt, pulling the holes shut. Kairi smiles. She’ll have to tell Cindy her spell came in handy.

She stands awkwardly, trying to get Riku into a position where she can carry him without hurting her or him, since he’s a good deal heavier and taller than her. But no sooner has she taken two steps than a ring of Nightmares surround her.

They’re tiny little things, frogs with cucumber-swords and lily-pad shields, and thorny purple plants that hover on bulbs just above the ground. “Oh no,” she says, carefully setting Riku back down, “we are not doing this. I am not in the mood.”

It feels kind of bad to attack them, they’re so small and cute, but she shotlocks them into oblivion anyway, before they manage any attacks of their own. Her golden flowers fade away. She floats down. Riku’s Spirit versions of the Dream Eaters approach from behind a tangled stand of roses. The frog holds up his sword in salute to her, but the little thorn-bush simply nuzzles against Riku’s side and makes a scratchy noise.

Kairi asks it, “Are you worried?” and it spins in place. Its eyes are blue and nervous-looking.

“Me too,” she sighs and leans down to pick up her boyfriend. Her _fiancé_ , but the thought isn’t as happy as it should be. Riku _looks_ alright, and his pulse is strong, but… he feels empty. Like a vase without water or flowers.

She looks at the castle gates. They’re towering and made of wrought iron, tangles of black metal that suggest plant shapes without actually being any definable shape at all. The cobbled road beyond them winds up a hill to the castle, vanishing and reappearing behind trees and hedges and stands of tall flowers. She doesn’t feel like dragging Riku up that long road. If this place is like the city, it’s empty. There are all these convenient houses around the plaza, crumbling and overgrown though they are.

Kairi knocks at a house door. There’s no answer, so she lets herself in. The two Spirits follow her. There’s hardly anything inside: a table with a red rose in a vase, a deck of cards, a handful of golden coins spread across it, a tarnished round mirror on the wall, a narrow bed. She lays Riku down on the cot and sits at the foot of it, leaning her back against the plastered wall. A needle and a bobbin of pink thread sit on the windowsill next to her.

The frog hops up beside her, holds up the needle thoughtfully, then gives her a look and gently sets it back down. The thorn-bush makes the scratchy noise again. She realizes it can’t get up on the bed on its own, so she picks it up. She expects it to curl up next to Riku, but it stays in her hands. It’s softer than she would have expected, and beats like a little heart.

She looks out the window, at the blush and purple sunrise hitting the leaves of an apple tree growing beside the cottage wall. It’s peaceful here. But underneath…

Sora’s emotions are a welter of fury and pain and fear, all directed inward, self-hating. The feelings claw at her, tearing at her mind and heart like frantic animals.

She rejects them. They are not hers. It hurts to know that Sora feels this way, but this is _not hers_ , she can’t deal with it right now. Can’t let it cloud her way forward. She thinks about hearts instead. The three of them are connected. She can’t reach Sora that way. He’s closer than he was, but still too distant. But Riku is right beside her.

She closes her eyes, puts one hand on his breast. Under the ribbed fabric of his shirt, under the warmth of skin, under the softness of muscle and fat, under the protective cage of rib bone, there beats a heart of flesh and blood. And under that, inside that, around that, there should be…. 

Kairi has never felt her own heart with any clarity. Not with an outside perspective. But she’s felt the other Princesses’. They’re made of pure light, with only superficial shadows on their surfaces, like smudges against glass, easily scrubbed away with a moment’s thought or a night’s sleep. Most people have hearts made of light with rippling trembles of darkness. Even Sora’s heart is like that, though it’s the strongest, warmest heart she’s ever encountered. 

Riku’s heart is unique, as far as she knows. There’s darkness in it at the core, but limned with light until it’s like a pearl. Nacreous. Transformed.

She searches for that light, peering for it behind her closed eyes, reaching after it with every heartbeat that vibrates up through her palm.

Riku, with his sea-green eyes and silver hair, his quiet smile, his early and sustained growth spurt he’s never stopped lording over all his shorter friends. Worrier Riku, who gets up in his own head and _frets_. Warrior Riku, who’ll do anything to protect his loved ones. No magic has ever made her forget him, no magic has ever disguised him from her. His heart veered away from hers once, dipped into the darkness, but he brought himself back out of it, took the damage done and shaped it into a strength. He’s saved her more times than she can count.

It’s dark all around her, deeper and colder than the dawn-lit room she’s sitting in could possibly get. But somewhere far below her, there’s a small light, soft and warm. She falls toward it, or calls it toward her - it’s impossible to describe the sensation. 

She hears something. It’s so quiet, she wouldn’t hear it all if she hadn’t put herself into this empty space. It’s a voice, muffled as though heard through several walls, or like listening to the ocean at the bottom of a very small seashell.

_Kairi!_

It’s Naminé.

Kairi’s startlement echoes out of her, waves of emotion loud enough to be an answer by themselves. She can feel her sister’s relief.

_Found you! Are you alright? Are Sora and Riku with you?_

_Naminé, how’d you find us? How did you know to come looking?_

_Sora’s mom called me. She found the three of you unconscious at home - somebody, an electrician or something, told her you’d missed some appointment? Anyway, she knew something was wrong, so she told me, and I told King Mickey, and he let a bunch of people know. Even and Ienzo are at your house. The three of you are hooked up to some machine they brought, but they say you’re only sleeping. I thought maybe I could help. I followed the links between our hearts, and now you have to tell me what_ is going on _with you._

It all comes out in a burst, half word and half image. Affection pulses through Kairi, and she thinks how lucky she is to have such amazing friends and family. 

_You’re a long way away,_ Naminé says. _I can barely make you out._

 _Same here,_ answers Kairi. She’s almost to the light, a radiant orb inside a golden bubble. _Naminé, Riku and I are inside Sora’s dreams. We’re falling through them, fighting Nightmares. I can feel Sora’s close now, but he’s still too far for me to reach._

There’s a thoughtful silence from Naminé, then, a pained admittal, _I can’t feel him at all. That’s never happpened before._

_Can you feel Riku?_

_Just barely. Why?_

_He ate a Nightmare and passed out._ She reaches out to embrace the light, drawing it to her. _I wanted to know if -_

Naminé sounds alarmed. _You mean you’re alone now?_

The warmth cradled in Kairi’s hands pulses. _Da-dun, da-dun._

 _Not really,_ she says. _I think I just got Riku back. Don’t worry. You know we’ll save Sora._

_Mmm. I know. But can you find your way home?_

_If we can’t, I’m sure we’ll hear your voice. We’ll follow that out._

_You can rely on me._ Naminé sounds pleased for a moment, but worried again right after. _Be careful, though, please. We’re all waiting for you up here._ Then, more emotion than sound: _We love you._

 _We love you, too._ Kairi doesn’t know who exactly is waiting anxiously in the little house for them to rouse, blink and yawn and stretch, but she has some solid guesses. 

Naminé, obviously, and Even and Ienzo. Her dad, the compulsive organizer, probably keeping his hands busy with some chore as he waits. Sora’s parents, and Riku’s. Oku, if he’s bothering to check his phone this week. Selphie would have come the moment she heard, and Tidus and Wakka not far behind.

Kairi’s unsure whether anybody not from the islands, besides the researchers, would’ve come over yet. They can’t have been asleep long. The worlds are, for once, at last, at peace, but that doesn’t mean King Mickey’s royal responsibilities are lessened, or Masters Aqua’ and Terra’s duties lightened. More prosaically, Twilight Town and Destiny Islands are on different calendars; it’s a workday for Roxas and everybody there. 

She says it again, compulsively. _We love you. We’ll see you all soon,_ and the light in her hands beats in time, _da-dun, da-dun._

She opens her eyes. Under her fingers, Riku’s chest is glowing. _Da-dun, da-dun._ His heartbeat thrums up through her arm.

The light fades. His eyes flick open and he sucks in a breath.

“Kairi,” he murmurs. “You called me back.”

The breath sighs out of her. She curls up beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. All around the room, the other Spirits reappear. Komori poofs in above Riku’s head, her beating wings stirring his hair and Kairi’s. There’s a squawk as Peppo appears and almost steps on the thorn-bush, which lashes back with spiny purple vines. Peppo takes off and lands on the wooden footboard, fluffing his feathers huffily. Kairi can hear Kelly roar outside. “Thank goodness. Where were you?”

Riku shakes his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t… anywhere. I wasn’t even me, I was just. Existing.” He turns in the bed, wraps his arms around her. “I think that was what Sora was frightened of, in that last nightmare. Losing himself.”

The thought rings true to her, like a string plucked on a harp. “Then why…?” She answers herself. “Everyone we saw in those visions lost themselves at some point.”

His arms tighten around her. “But we all came back,” he says into her hair. “We all made it.”

“Sora’s more like you than me,” she says. Part of being a Princess of Heart, it seems to her, is the ability to simply _deal_ with trauma and hurt. To process it, learn from it, and move forward. Riku dwells in his pain for a long time, winding himself into tighter spirals over it, turning everything into his own fault. Sora… “He hangs on to the bad stuff. He doesn’t talk about it, he pretends it’s not there. But that just makes it worse, in the long run.”

“You think…” He hesitates. “You think that’s what that bastard meant?”

“Huh? Who?”

“Xehanort. When he said there was a ‘lack of understanding’. That we don’t know what’s really going on with Sora, because he always acts like a happy dumbass?”

“I wouldn’t trust a word from that man’s mouth,” she says snippily, then sighs. “But as I keep saying, it wasn’t really him. Everything here comes right from Sora. So some part of him must really feel like that.”

They’re quiet for a minute. Kairi can feel the storm of Sora’s emotions tugging at her, trying to drag her into recriminations and doubt. “We can’t second-guess ourselves here,” she says. “Let’s save Sora. We’ll talk it all out, once we’re home.”

“If he’ll let us,” Riku says, and sits up, swinging his feet off the bed. “Aagh - stiff.”

“Sorry,” says Kairi. She glances out the window again. It’s still just daybreak outside, so it’s impossible to tell how much time they’ve spent here. She doesn’t feel achy or tired, but she is hungry again.

Riku brings out the cooler. There’s nowhere to wash their hands here, so they stick to fruit, more mangos and some slightly battered bananas. While they eat, she asks, “What’re the new ones’ names?”

“What?”

She points at the thorn-bush, still cuddled in her lap, and at the frog, who’s hopped to the floor and is play-tussling with Mina.

“Oh, Caro’s the knight, and Folly’s the plant.” The frog, hearing its name, stands to attention, and Mina bowls it over, prompting a deeply offended ribbit of protest. 

Kairi laughs. “Hang tough, Caro!” The frog bounces back to its feet and drives Mina away with a flurry of sword-jabs. The salamander flops onto her back, either tired or surrendering, and Caro holds up its sword in a triumphant pose.

“Good work!” She looks down, petting Folly while carefully avoiding the thorns. “I wish there was some way to see them more often. I like them a lot.”

“You must have your own,” Riku says. “While you sleep.”

“Maybe. But I haven’t ever seen them.”

He looks at Komori, hanging from the window frame. “I don’t see mine usually, either. I think they’re ‘backstage’, normally. Behind the parts of the dream that you see while you sleep.” He looks back at her. “But, y’know, there’s no reason we can’t see them again once we’re home - Sora can summon them up some time.”

She grins. “That’d be great!” It’s true, Sora has a Dream Eater summon. Summoning is a rare talent, but Sora’s got a knack for it. Maybe he’s so good at it because his heart is so open to others. He won’t mind showing it off.

They leave the cottage after making sure all the Spirits get a snack. She looks around the square, and toward the castle. “I think we should head up. Every dream so far has ended on a tower.”

Riku rubs his nose. “Yeah, I think that’s the right call. It smells right, anyway.”

She draws Destiny’s Embrace and unlocks the imposing gates. The winding drive beyond is made of cracked grey pavers, with wildflowers and grasses growing through the cracks.

“It’s interesting,” she says, observing the overgrown gardens as they walk up. “There was nothing but dirt and bones in the first dream, and nothing alive in the second, but this one’s overrun with plant life.”

“Times are different, too,” he answers. “Sunset, night, now dawn. That seems hopeful, doesn’t it?”

She thinks it does, but at the same time… She raises a hand to her chest. “Sora feels even more stressed, though. So I don’t know whether to be encouraged or not.”

“This place doesn’t smell as dark.” He’s walking with his hands in his pockets, a small smile at the edges of his mouth. “Let’s be encouraged.”

She holds her hand out to him and wiggles her fingers. This isn’t anything like a date, some pleasant stroll through a park, but it’d be nice to hold hands nonetheless.

Just as he takes it, a Blizzard spell whirs by in a blast of cold air. They yank apart again, summoning their weapons. She glares around for the source of the magic. Behind a bush, about six meters ahead, she spies a waving purple tendril, decorated with yellow diamonds. The tip of the tendril glows and fires a Thunder spell at them.

“Behind the blue bush!” she shouts, knocking the Thunder orb aside. Riku sends a blast of his own Blizzard magic at the plant. The whole thing freezes over, a clump of gleaming ice, and something wails, thin and high, behind it.

She runs up to it. A Nightmare like a rabbit, encased in ice up to its neck, looks up at her with wide red eyes. The purple ‘tendrils’ are its long ears. It waves them over its head and casts something at her, but the wind-up is too obvious. She blocks the spell and takes out the rabbit with one combo.

She dismisses Destiny’s Embrace, feeling her mouth crinkle downwards. “Why are the enemies here so cute?” she complains as they walk on. “I feel terrible, beating them up.”

“It doesn’t matter what they look like,” Riku says somberly, and a chill goes through her as she recalls the crystal Nightmare in the last dream. “They’re all out to hurt Sora. And us.”

His words are proven right. Every few meters along the road, they’re ambushed by another spell cast from concealment.

“Ouch!” Kairi cries as thorny purple vines lash across her legs. She can feel the acid burn of poison in each shallow scratch. “Cure,” she hisses, frustrated by their slow progress, “and Esuna.” The restorative magics close the wounds and cleanse the poison.

Her fuzzy feelings of regret have been mostly replaced by annoyance. The attacks from the long-eared rabbits and the tiny thorn-bushes are weak and easy to deal with, but they’re a drain on her resources, and a delay.

Riku destroys the thorn-plant, hiding behind an alabaster urn, with a homing Dark Firaga. He turns to her. “Let’s get off this path, or we’re just gonna get sniped the whole way up.”

She looks up - the castle looms over them, still a good distance up the hill. She raises a hand and rubs her shoulder. The muscle feels stiff under her fingers. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve got too many more Flight spells left in me.”

“No worries. This is all overgrown, but it’s still parkland. It can’t be too hard to go cross-country through it.”

The grass has grown tall, and baby oaks are springing up where no gardener would have ever put them, but trudging along through the underbrush does turn out to be easier than the winding lane. There still are a couple Nightmares, but Riku and Kairi sneak up on them, rather than vice versa.

Kairi feels another one of the rabbits ahead, a tiny dark distortion in the peaceful landscape. “Sssh,” she warns Riku, and points ahead to an ivy-covered wall. He nods, and they both spring forward, whipping around the wall with keyblades raised. The Nightmare jerks in alarm, its eartips beginning to glow - then the rainbow crystals of a Sparkga smash into it. It gives a surprised squeal and vanishes.

She didn’t cast that; neither did Riku. It’s not in Komori’s spell list. So who…?

There’s a warble from Komori, and the bat flies over to an ornamental bench as a purple-eyed, pink rabbit hops out from behind it.

Riku grins. “Should have expected this.” The rabbit hops right up to him, springing toward his chest so he’ll catch it. “Thanks, Lima,” he says, cradling it with one arm and chucking it under the chin with his free hand.

“What a darling,” Kairi coos, coming closer. The rabbit perks up its ears at her.

“Give him a pat. He’s a real cuddle-bug.”

She does, scratching around the base of Lima’s ear. His fur’s short, but so soft. He makes a little fluttery noise and leans into her hand. “That was a big Sparkga for a little fellow,” she murmurs. “Very impressive. Will you keep helping us?”

The little creature puffs up at the praise and hops to the ground. He twirls, capelet fluttering, and strikes an action pose.

“Looks like a yes,” Riku chuckles.

Beyond the next copse of trees, there’s a hidden grotto tucked into the hillside. Another bench overgrown by ivy next to a lily-pad choked pond. An ankle-high ornamental wall surrounds the pool and at the back of it - the waterfall that should feed the pond apparently didn’t receive the memo about basic physics. Water pours _up_ and vanishes into the hillside.

Kairi glances at Riku. Out of all the worlds they’ve been to, she remembers seeing rising falls only one other time, through Sora’s eyes. 

His mouth’s a grim slash as he assesses the water feature. Then, surprising her, he steps forward, plunging through the water.

“Riku?”

He steps back, soaked, carrying a treasure chest of amethyst and etched silver metal. He sets it down and shakes his head, water droplets flying every which way.

“Nice find,” she says, and taps the chest to open it.

Inside is a sickly green figment, lit from within. As Riku holds it up, everything turns cold and dim. She hears water dripping, trickling, and smells moss and wet stone. _“You’d… kinda be in my way,”_ Sora chuckles, and an old disappointment settles heavy in her chest. 

“He was right, though,” she argues with it. “I wasn’t ready for that kind of fight back then.”

The memory clears, but slowly, lingering like a green fog around the edges of her mind. She shakes her head stubbornly. “He was right to leave me behind then.”

“But I was in the wrong,” Riku says.

“About what? What did you think of?”

His mouth twists and he looks away. “Taking Sora’s keyblade, his first visit to Hollow Bastion. And Donald and Goofy following me, even though they didn’t want to.”

“Oh.” She puts a hand on his arm, glad when he doesn’t move away or flinch. “But we’ve all forgiven that.”

He looks at the figment in his palm, clenches his fingers around it. He meets her eyes. “Forgiven’s not the same as forgotten.”

“It’s still _something_.” He doesn’t answer her, only consumes the figment and walks on. With Sora’s anxiety twisting under her skin like snakes, she doesn’t have the energy to drive her point home, so she lets the subject rest.

They hike on until they reach the worn stone walls of the castle. It looks battered, as though it’s survived assaults and sieges, and when they walk around to the front, the massive entry doors are warped in their frames and sag open like a tired mouth.

Inside, the entrance hall is u-shaped, with stairs at the back and a balcony running around the second story. What alarms Kairi is what’s along the walls - glass coffins, each one with a Princess of Heart asleep inside. She walks to the closest one. Alice is inside it, her hands folded across her white apron, fluffy blonde hair neatly combed across her shoulders.

Kairi lays her hand across the glass and realizes Alice… isn’t really in there. The case is empty, no matter what her eyes show her. She walks around the hall, checking each coffin, just in case. She pauses for a long time by her own, looking at her fourteen-year-old self, with her pixie-cut hair, skinny legs, fading freckles. She was so small back then.

There’s a sort of hollow feeling inside her chest, and a lump pressing against the back of her throat. How vulnerable this little girl looks, how tired and alone. Sora’s regret squeezes her heart. She holds her hand out and Riku takes it. The callused warmth of his grip is reassuring.

“It all worked out in the end,” she says aloud. Her voice bounces off the high ceiling: _"End" "end" "end"_

From the next room, there’s another voice, high and cheerful, one she hadn’t expected in these bleak dreams: “Ready, fellas?”

It’s King Mickey. 

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡

Relief floods through Riku. Mickey’s here. The king knows so much, and his confidence and kindness have helped Riku through so many rough times. He’ll get them through this, too.

He turns to Kairi. Her eyes are wide, her mouth an ‘o’ of surprise. He tugs on her hand. “The king’s here! He’ll know how to help Sora.”

“Yeah, he probably will!” Her blue-violet eyes sparkle as she laughs. He only now realizes how tired she’d looked before, how great a weight has now slipped from her shoulders. He feels lighter, too.

They run up the stairs at the end of the entry. Their pounding footsteps echo off the walls. The next room is a much larger hall, and at the far end, the gilded doors are swinging shut. “Your majesty!” Riku shouts. “Wait up!”

“We’re back here!” Kairi calls.

They burst into an open courtyard, flowering fruit trees in pots spaced along shaded walkways. King Mickey is just visible walking behind a gummed-up fountain, with Donald and Goofy at his side. They don’t respond at all to Riku’ and Kairi’s yelling.

“Too bad about Sora,” Goofy says, his long face downcast.

“Yeah, he left us to do all the work,” Donald complains.

“Donald! Goofy!”

“We’re here, right behind you!”

Goofy bonks Donald on the head. “Donald! Just say ya miss him, too!”

Mickey looks over his shoulder at them. He should see Riku and Kairi running, but his eyes don’t even flicker. “We all miss him, and Riku and Kairi, but ‘til they wake up, it’s up to us to keep the worlds safe! We can’t let ‘em down, fellas.”

A small bug hops onto Goofy’s shoulder, piping up, “And Jiminy Cricket’s here to record it all! This way, when they’re well again, it’ll be easy to catch them up on everything that’s happened!”

Riku slows, stops. His pulse pounds in his throat and wrists, and his mouth’s gone dry. What’s going on? Are these only dream-versions of the king and his friends? They smell real, but so did the Sora-Nightmare from the last dream, at least at first. And there’s their conversation… What if they aren’t dreams? How much time has passed? He starts to tell Kairi to get in touch with Naminé, but turns around to see she’s collapsed to her knees, hugging her chest.

“What’s wrong?” In an instant, he’s kneeling beside her.

She gasps, “It’s bitter,” and shakes her head desperately. “But it’s not mine, it’s not mine.” She looks up at him, her face pale and pinched, and holds her hand up to him. He seizes it, holds it tight.

“He’s blaming himself, again. We know he’s aware of all these dreams. I think he’s frightened of this as a possible future.”

Riku bites the inside of his mouth as a rush of protective anger swells through him. He stands, drawing Kairi up with him. “Let’s get to him quickly,” he says. 

King Mickey and the others are gone. There’s a pair of carved wooden doors still swinging slightly to show where they went, but as Riku and Kairi hurry through the shabby castle, they don’t hear their voices again.

They don’t find any Dream Eaters, either, until they’re in a wide tower room like a chapel. There are brown, dried brambles drifting in through the shattered windows, and the place reminds Riku of Maleficent, so he’s hurrying them through it when a handful of ash-brown dragons appear, each the size of a small horse. Some slither through the briars, others flutter in the air. 

“Damn,” he sighs, drawing his keyblade. “Watch out, Kairi, these guys are tougher than the other ones -” He’s cut off as the brambles suddenly ignite. His Spirits, appearing for combat, manifest in the thick of the mess, crying out in shock at the unexpected flames. Embers and thick, greasy black smoke fill the air, and a dragon charges at him. He dodges, barely evades a dropping firebrand, flings a Watera spell at a different dragon.

They’re fast and agile enemies, though, and water element spells tend to be slow. It dodges the bubbling blue sphere with ease and leaps at him with claws extended. His rhino Spirit, Sai tunnels up in front of him and takes the hit. He uses Flowmotion, slingshots himself around, and slashes past the dragon like a buzzsaw. “Kairi,” he shouts, choking on smoke. He can’t see her through the dark billows.

“I’m here,” she shouts back. “You - ack, get _away_ \- you okay?”

“Fine.” He tries not to breathe too deeply. “Can you build up some grand Water magic and douse all this? It’s hard -” A dragon roars out of the smoke at him, he slashes at it. “It’s hard to tell what’s going on!”

“I think I can! Give me a minute!”

His eyes are watering, so he closes them. It’s harder to fight blind than usual - the smoke messes up his sense of smell too. He dashes around the room instead, feeling for the bond between him and his Spirits. When one cries out or feels like it’s in trouble, he’s at its side in moments, casting Thunder or Aero, spells that strike a wide range.

He finds his version of the dragons that way. Yuru’s gotten pinned by two of the Nightmares. They’ve knocked her onto her back and are scratching at her belly with their hind legs, while their front legs keep her wings and long neck flat on the floor. Her wildly flailing tail almost hits Riku as he comes blindly to her rescue. He winds up his keyblade, then unleashes a powerful strike that erases gravity for both enemies. 

They rise into the air, scrabbling for purchase. He deals a string of hits to each of them, and Paige canters up, sending a scythe of air their way to finish them off. Komori flaps over too, and screeches at Yuru, waves of healing force. The dragon flips to her feet and charges into the smoke, all distress forgotten.

The scorched air suddenly cools. Kairi yells, her voice rasping, “Anybody thirsty?” The smoke rushes toward Riku. He covers his face instinctively. A bubble of cool, sweet water, a meter thick, passes over him, and he can smell easily again. He blinks open his eyes, wipes water from his face. Kairi’s spell drowns the fire, pushes the smoke out the windows, slams the dragons into the walls. Stunned, they’re easy pickings for his Spirits.

“Nice work,” he compliments, turning toward her. His eyes widen. Over her head floats a fiery orb, a number in black wrought iron. A time bomb counting down. “Kairi!”

The orb and the number explode. Her whole body jolts with the impact. She collapses, clutching at her head.

There’s blood in her red hair, blood steaming on the charred wooden floor, and she sobs once, a dry, racking sound. He drops to his knees beside her. His breath is coming so fast, he can’t actually get air. 

Somehow he manages to pull off a Cura, though it takes more energy from him than it should. The blood vanishes. Her hands unclamp. He pulls her upright, brushes hair out of her face, checking desperately for any other wounds under the layer of smoot that smudges her freckled skin.

She grabs his hands, pulls them down. “I’m fine, I’m fine now! Promise!” Her slender eyebrows wrinkle in concern as his breath keeps huffing in and out. “Riku, don’t worry -” She breaks off. Her face blanches. “Worry about yourself!”

Her hands flutter to his hip. He looks down. His clothes are all soaked from her spell, but the heaviness of wet denim down his left leg is from blood, not water. He stares at the dark red stain creeping through the fabric, confused. When did that happen?

“Curaga,” she says, pressing down hard. Yellow flowers appear around them, a smell like sap and myrrh and sunshine, and the stain rolls in reverse. The blood flows back into him, and he can feel the muscle and skin knit together. His breathing slows and evens out.

He meets Kairi’s eyes. “Alright,” he says. “How about this - we promise to let each other worry. Because we need to. Because if it weren’t for healing magic, we’d both be dead a hundred times.”

She exhales and slumps forward, resting her head against his shoulder. His hand rises to her hair, running through the dark red strands, unable to keep from searching for any still-open wounds on her skull.

“Thank goodness for Curaga, huh?” she murmurs. Komori flaps down onto the ground beside them, crawls into their laps, and chirps tiredly.

“You too, Komori,” he says. “If you need to worry, go ahead.”

She lets out a single wave of curative sound, ruffling his bangs. It’s more like a burp than a battlecry, and he laughs.

But when he stops, the laughter keeps going above them. Mocking.

He and Kairi jerk back to their feet. Komori takes off again. His Spirits leap back into battle stances.

“Why are they always up high?” sighs Riku, turning to face the room’s single balcony, then freezes. 

It’s him standing up there, silver hair just brushing his shoulders, at the height of his idiocy. He’s wearing the form-fitting suit he did when Ansem possessed him. More than that, the darkness rolls off him in a stench so strong, Riku covers his nose. 

“You’re pathetic,” sneers the boy. Riku almost forgot how short he was back then. The disgust that wells up in his throat is mixed with a little pity, too. What a dumb _kid_ he was, all caught up in fear and jealousy and pride. Is this what adulthood’s gonna be like? Looking back forever at the him from a few years ago, and cringing?

“You can’t possibly think you’re cut out to save the worlds? Look how many times you’ve got your asses kicked!”

“Don’t engage,” Kairi hisses. She’s back in her battle pose, ready to attack.

“But,” he says, “they reveal things when they talk.”

“What, you’re looking for information?” asks the boy. “Aren’t you too stupid to make use of it, though? Look how long it’s taken you to figure out something’s wrong with him!” His laughter’s sharp and thorny. “It’s been years!”

“There is nothing _wrong_ with Sora!” Riku says, his face flushing.

Kairi hisses, “Riku!”, but it’s drowned by the boy’s laughter.

“Nothing wrong? Nothing wrong?! What do you think _this_ is?” He waves a hand at the ground, and a shadow springs up out of it. It’s an inky mirror of a younger Sora, crouching, holding a darkness-wrapped Kingdom Key ready, like the Heartless Riku set on him once aboard Captain Hook’s ship. As with Xehanort’s summoned ‘Neoshadows’, its eyes are flat Nightmare crimson.

The shadow-Sora drops its keyblade, which vanishes as a wisp of smoke. It contorts itself taller, its fingers crooking, the smoke wisping from its body now with every slight movement, standing like a wary animal, ready to jump and claw. Then it shudders again, a little taller, and the keyblade reappears, still stained by darkness. White lines flicker across the shadow’s clothing, forming patterns of flames. It drops again into a crouch, looking this way and that, shadowy Kingdom Key held threateningly.

His past self drops on it like a bolt of lightning, stabbing Soul Eater through it, into the floor. It squirms for a moment like a pinned butterfly, then dissipates in swirls of black smoke. Riku’s breath catches. His teeth clench so hard, his jaw creaks.

“You’re fools,” the boy says as he stands, yanking his sword out. “I’m gonna enjoy taking you down.”

Kairi doesn’t let him say anything else, sending a furious Blizzard Raid right at him. He leaps over it, slashing the air with his sword, leaving behind a purple ‘x’ of energy that he fires at her. She dodges away while Riku calls down a Thundaga that scatters the entire room with bolts of lightning.

The boy blocks them, then evades a missile strike from Lida and a wrathful, horns-first charge from Bey. “Brought your friends, huh?” he asks. “Not strong enough on your own?”

That’s such a cheap, ineffective line, given everything Riku’s been through, that he can only roll his eyes. He can feel protective spells landing on his skin from his Spirits - Auto-Life, Shell, Protect, Spirit Roar. Not to paraphrase Sora, but… “My friends give me power,” he grits, and slide dashes into melee range. At the last second, as his past self prepares to answer the blow, he leaps up, out of the way.

Kairi’s raid connects this time. She teleports in, gets in three hits while the boy’s off balance, then skitters away. Riku dives down, landing with a shockwave that he laces with poison. His past self grunts as it hits him, but his skin doesn’t take on the sickly tinge that would mean the poison landed.

The boy leaps back up to the balcony, putting some distance between them. He sneers, “Too bad for you, then. I’ve got some friends of my own. In fact, they were your friends once, too…”

His shadow stretches down from the balcony, across the room, and splits into pieces. Each shard wiggles, sprouting limbs and antennae, blinking open red eyes. More Nightmares, masquerading now as Shadows. They’re not as frightening as Xehanort’s Neoshadows, but there’s a lot more of them, and if they gather into a Demon Tower - well. He doesn’t want that.

“Squash them,” he orders his Spirits, and they jump to follow the command.

“Do you know,” the boy says, blue fire gathering around his upraised palm, “how much he hates your darkness?” The flames spit forward. Riku answers with his own Dark Firaga - the spells meet halfway and explode in a spectacular burst of azure. Riku feels his eyebrows crisp from the backlash.

Kairi teleports to stand beside him. “He does not,” she assures him. She holds her keyblade aloft and summons down a pillar of golden light that smashes the balcony - the boy jumps away. “We’re both blown away by how cool you are. Nobody else has ever used darkness like you do.”

“That’s the point, idiot!” his past self snaps. A purple stained ink-blot streaks along the floor from where he landed, until it’s underneath their feet. They jump back as six claws burst out of it, snapping together to form a cage. “How unfair is it, that you get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks?”

Riku growls, “I went through a lot to get here.” Still midair, he gathers energy, pooling fire and earth and darkness. He lands with a crash, dragging a dozen burning meteors into existence down with him.

The boy gets hit by one, knocked flat. Kairi’s on him in a flash, zooming in to hit him seven times in a row, each strike accompanied by a starburst of light. But on the last strike, the boy’s set up a reprisal, six carved crystals of dark energy that shimmer into existence around Kairi. Flames circle each crystal in tighter and tighter spirals, and when they touch, they -

“No,” she yells, fending off the explosion with a massive, spiky donut of ice. “I have been blown up enough for one day!”

She’s preoccupied dealing with that, though, and Riku’s distracted watching her. His past self recovers from her attacks and jumps into the air above Riku’s head. He drops down. Soul Eater slams into Riku’s shoulder.

Burning pain rips through him, and something snaps and pops. Broken collarbone? Dislocated shoulder? He can’t tell, basically everything hurts. He bites down a scream as pillars of darkness erupt around him, each shrouded with lightning. They lick like acid across his skin.

“You get to control it!” his past self yells. Riku fumbles in his pocket for a high-potion. Every movement, even with the unhurt arm, is agony. He was hurt worse earlier, fighting in the city, but he’s more tired now, less able to ignore it. And it’s the same damn arm, too. “It’s yours, and it does what you tell it to!” Riku takes a gulp, only half-listening. “Do you have any idea -”

He stops, stares down at his chest and the smoking spearpoint sticking out from it. Kairi’s standing behind him, Destiny’s Embrace transformed in her hands, and looking as shocked as him. 

She drops her keyblade and it desummons. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, blood.”

The boy collapses to his knees, clutching at his chest. Blood leaks between his teeth. “Surprise,” he says hoarsely. “I’m the realest memory in here. It wasn’t the first trauma, but it was maybe the biggest.” He grins up at Riku, who stares woozily back. The boy’s mouth is a horrible red crescent. “You’re never gonna get rid of me,” he says, his body wisping away into dark smoke. “He’s forgiven you, but he’s never gonna forget.”

Regret clenches around Riku’s heart like a fist. “I know.”

The last trace of his past self fades. Kairi totters over to him. He can see concern winning out over shock in her expression, and he falls more in love with her than ever. He doesn’t deserve her.

Kairi sets a light hand on his shoulder, cures the last traces of pain. “We don’t know that,” she says to him. She touches his jaw, turns his head to look into her eyes. Her face looks bruised by tiredness, but her eyes are clear. “‘Never’ is a long time. The wound’s not healed yet, but we’ve got the rest of our lives.” Her mouth twitches. “Healing magic. They’ll be long ones.”

His voice feels thick in his throat, but it comes out strongly. “Yeah. We’ll do better after this, looking after Sora.”

A pair of massively tall white doors are standing in the space where his past self was. They’re familiar, with peaked top and inset panels of stained glass. They begin to creak open.

Riku coughs - the ocean smell is abruptly overwhelming. Water begins pouring out of the doors, slowly at first, but with increasing force. They brace against it. It sweeps over their feet, rises to their calves, knees, thighs. There’s an ocean visible through the fully open doors. Riku pushes forward a step, and the water stops rushing out… then just as suddenly begins to drain away, with a sound like liquid drawn through a straw.

Kairi grabs his hand, holds tight. The ocean horizon through the doors is getting _higher_. Riku looks around wildly. They’re already on the high ground, where are they supposed to go…?

They’re not in the tower anymore. There’s nothing around them, not even his Spirits, nothing but a flat expanse of brilliant blue water, shallow enough to see the white sand beneath.

“Behind us!” says Kairi, tugging at him. “It’s the play island!”

Riku spins around. The little island they grew up on, a rising dome of thick jungle growth skirted by sloping beach, is gleaming in the sunlight. 

They run, splashing through water that’s only knee-high now, rushing past them so every step is an effort. If they can get around to the other side of the island, get into one of the high-up caves…

There’s a woman’s voice in his ear. _“What’s he going to do? I mean... he barely graduated...”_

Someone else, a man, sighs. _“I dunno, hun. It’s up to him.”_

It sounds like Sora’s parents. What is this?

 _“I just want him to be happy, but -”_ There’s a sound like a muffled sob. _“People in the market are talking about him living with both Kairi and Riku, and I don’t care, I’m just thinking about - when is he gonna run off again? What if he decides to_ leave _the islands? What if we forget him again? What if he disappears, or dies, or -”_ A full sob, wrenched out of the woman’s throat. _“He won’t hardly tell us about all the things that have happened, so I can’t talk to him.”_

 _“I know.”_ The voices are quiet for a moment. Riku’s only hears his and Kairi’s ragged breathing and the gurgle of draining water. Then, the man’s voice. _“I wish he could just stay here. I wish I could protect him from everything that’s out there.”_

 _“I’m so afraid for him,”_ whispers the woman’s voice. _“I have nightmares all the time.”_

_“Me too, hun.”_

Was this a conversation Sora overheard? He glances over at Kairi - she looks as puzzled as he does. “You hearing this?”

“Yeah,” she pants. “Emi and Taro.”

 _“More than happy,”_ whispers Sora’s mom, _“I want him to be safe. But I can’t make that happen.”_

The sea’s only ankle-high. It’s easier to run now, but Riku can hear the wave racing behind them. It drowns out Emi and Taro’s voices, getting louder, a hissing roar that vibrates in his skull.

They’re almost at the beach when the wave catches up to them. As its shadow looms over their head, Kairi casts her gold-chain binding spell again. 

The wave smashes them, ripping their hands apart. Riku’s whirled through the water. Dazed, doesn’t know which way is up. He squeezes his burning eyes shut. Water fills his ears, stings in his nose. He keeps his mouth locked by a measure of will, though his lungs seize in his chest. The chain around his wrist goes taut.

He slams face-first into something hard. Stars erupt behind his eyes; his jaw unlocks, his breath whooshes out as a stream of bubbles. His face throbs. He may have broken his nose. Maybe he’s hit the rock wall of the island. 

The water keeps him pinned for a moment more, while he tries desperately not to inhale. The pressure eases, the ocean releases him. He gulps in air. Something coppery trickles into his mouth. Blood. He reaches a shaking hand into a pocket, encounters the sharp points of broken glass. Even the durable potion bottles broke.

With a groan and an effort, he reaches for a Cure spell. It’s green and smells like sap, and it doesn’t heal much, but the hot stream of blood down his face slackens, then stops. 

He blinks his eyes open. His cheek is resting against something flat and cheerful yellow. His left eye, pressed closer to the ground, sees bright colors stretching away. His right eye sees dark blue void.

The chain around his wrist rattles, then vanishes. He sits up, ignoring the stab of complaint from bruised muscles. “Kairi!”

“Riku!” Her voice is ragged, but it’s not far away. He twists. She’s lying face-down on the colorful floor - Splat! Like a starfish dropped by seagulls. He tries standing, can’t quite do it. Too dizzy. Everything spins. He takes deep breaths and narrowly avoids being sick. 

He stands again, much more slowly. Kairi’s sitting up now, her hands pressed to her head. Good. He looks around. They’re -

They’re on a platform of stained glass, in the middle of a void. _A station of awakening._ The platform’s too big for him to really make out what it’s a mosaic of, but he can make a good guess.

Bright colors. Crown emblems. If he squints, he can make the yellow and dark grey shape nearby into a big sneaker. This must be Sora’s station.

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	6. Dream

Every muscle in Kairi’s body hurts. Her mouth feels like a prune. There’s sand in places that are gonna chafe like heck if she has to do any more running or fighting. Most of all, there’s a throbbing pain above her left eye. She prods it gingerly and hisses. That’s gonna be a goose-egg in an hour or two, probably with a beautiful black eye to match.

She groans, and hears Riku begin limping toward her. She puts a hand in her pocket and finds only sticky broken glass. “Oh, _no_ ,” she sighs, turning the fabric inside out. The broken potions and ethers slide stickily out, covered in green and blue liquid mixed into aquamarine tie-dye.

Riku stops beside her and drops his own handful of goopy, shattered glass. She stares at it mournfully, then glances up and gasps. “Riku, your face!” His nose is swollen, and the lower half of his face is coated in dried blood.

He winces, “I know,” then half-grins at her. “You don’t look a lot better.” 

She raises a hand to her temple again. Yep, that’s definitely a bump rising. She sighs, “Cure,” all she has energy for, and the pains lessen, though she can still feel the bump. 

There’s a ‘ _cheep_ ’ in front of her. She squints around - she doesn’t see any of the Spirits. Something on the very edge of the platform moves. A pair of tiny claws are hooked over the edge of it, and as Kairi watches, Komori heaves herself over the ledge, looking bedraggled. The bat must’ve come through the tidal wave with them.

Riku picks the little creature up. She warbles at him, then flaps her wings and totters unsteadily into the air. Riku watches her with concern, then glances over at Kairi with equal worry. “Doesn’t seem like any of us are at our best.” He flips a wrist at thin air, and the long-eared rabbit Spirit, Lima, poofs into being. His little nose wobbles and he blinks big heart-shape eyes at them, then casts Curaga on each of them.

Kairi lets out a big breath as her various aches and pains dissipate. She’s back to full health, but her magic is still low. “I don’t suppose,” she asks, “any of your spirits know MP Gift?”

Riku shakes his head.

“Too bad,” she murmurs and pushes herself to her feet. She steps forward and takes Riku’s hand.

Steps appear in front of them, floating in space, curving gently upward, as though triggered by the motion. They gaze at them in silence for a moment. However exhausted they are, this has got to be the end of the journey. 

They follow the staircase up to another pillar, its sides of stained glass illuminated from within. Kairi gasps. “Sora!”

Standing in the middle of the flat, bright expanse is Sora, his back to them. It really is him, not a Nightmare; it feels like him, there’s no Dream Eater mark on his clothes, and when he turns toward them, his wide eyes are human and as blue as a summer sky.

“What are you guys doing here?” His voice half-breaks on the question. There’s a sound of metal singing, coming from the abyss below, getting louder. Riku drops behind her, looking over his shoulder. 

Kairi reaches out to Sora. “It’s okay, Sora, we all fell asleep and -” He jerks away from her hand, takes a half-step back. 

He closes those beautiful blue eyes, grinds his fists into them. He talks over her. “I didn’t ever want you here, I hate this part of me…”

The ringing noise comes from every direction now. It’s all of Sora’s keyblades again, stacking up around the platform, teeth pointed toward them. Riku calls up Way to the Heart, puts his back toward Kairi and Sora, ready to protect them.

Kairi’s throat tightens. She can hear her voice rising in pitch. “Sora, it’s alright! We’ve been looking for you! We’re here together now, we’ll fight it off, and go -”

Sora half-laughs, wild and bitter. “You can’t _fight it off_ , it’s me.” 

He makes an odd, choked sound, and his body lashes like a whip. All the color springs off him like shattered glass.

It’s still Sora, standing there. But he’s covered in darkness, trailing it like smoke. His eyes are round, glowing yellow. He doesn’t say a word, but calls up the Kingdom Key, and settles into his fighting stance, glaring at them.

No way. Is Sora going to fight them?

They’re just here to help. They’re going to go home together.

The Kingdom Key plunges toward her. She watches it descend, frozen. No way. Sora wouldn’t -

Riku knocks her out of the way, catches the Kingdom Key against Way to the Heart. “What are you thinking?! Sora!” 

Sora’s expression doesn’t change. That’s the most frightening thing about Sora’s dark forms, always. Seeing Sora, whose face shows everything he feels, who wears his heart on his sleeve, blank and unresponsive.

He swipes out with his free hand, slashing under Riku’s guard. His fingers trail red light, leaving burning clawmarks in the air. Riku breaks away, backing up against her. “Kairi,” he says, “Looks like we’re gonna have to knock him back to his senses.”

She nods numbly. For the first time since they started this dive, she’s not feeling the echo of Sora’s emotions. She wishes she was, now, so she’d know _why_ he was doing this. 

But - she calls out Destiny’s Embrace, the blade manifesting slowly, as though it’s as reluctant as she is - doesn’t she know?

Rage Form is all the darkness inside Sora. All the hurt he hides behind a smile, all the fears he won’t admit to, all the anger that has no outlet when there are no enemies. He swallows it all, and it festers inside him. Like a boil, it has to burst eventually.

He strikes out at them, a flurry of keyblade swings and lashing claws. They give ground, retreating in a circle around the platform. In spite of his bravado, it seems like Riku doesn’t want to fight any more than she does.

The keyblades sing behind them; Kairi can feel the air pressure of their shivering. One flies toward them. She whips around, standing back to back with Riku, holding Destiny’s Embrace defensively before her. 

In a puff of magic, Yuru appears in front of her, leaping up and fending off Wishing Lamp with a snap of her jaws. The metal ringing of the keyblades is abruptly drowned out by the warbles, grunts, and roars of the Dream Eaters. They’re all around the edges of the station, facing out toward the keyblades. 

It’s Spirits versus Nightmares, she realizes. These Spirits are as much Sora’s as they are Riku’s; they won’t fight him, but they’ll help keep the arena clear of other foes. 

A crescent of red light bears down on them. She and Riku dodge in opposite directions. Sora whirls after her, slashing back and forth in the air. Every strike leaves behind a glowing line of red energy, as though the air itself is wounded. She weaves her way through them, thinking desperately what she can do to break Sora out of this.

He doesn’t want them here, he made that clear. He’s ashamed of this part of himself. But they can’t, _won’t_ leave without him.

The ground erupts under her, hissing pillars of red light. She dodges, but not fast enough. One catches her leg, burning like acid.

She shrieks. Flings her keyblade away to the far side of the station, teleports herself to it, and half collapses. Her skin is _sizzling_ ; she’s afraid to even look at it. She scrapes the bottom of her reserve of magic, comes up with just enough for a single Cure. The Spirits are occupied with the Nightmare keyblades, none of them are going to help.

She leans, panting, on Destiny’s Embrace. Riku’s holding Sora off, both moving so fast they’re just blurs of light. But Sora’s moving faster. She can see sparks flying off the Riku-light as he’s hit, again and again.

“Riku! Riku, I think we’re -” she breaks off, swallowing a groan of pain as her leg throbs. “I don’t think we’re going to win this!”

There hasn’t been an enemy for a while. No war for the worlds. But nothing’s happened to Sora lately, either. No massive trauma that strips away his abilities, breaks his heart, or wipes his memory. He’s fighting them at full power, and they’re already exhausted.

The Riku-light flies into the air, knocked skyward, resolving into the shape of a boy again. Sora watches him go, then his head turns toward Kairi, round yellow eyes staring. She stands upright, putting most of her weight on her left leg. She drags in a breath, preparing herself. Barrier takes almost no energy to manifest, especially if she can get the timing perfect. 

He throws himself toward her, keyblade and claws outstretched. She can’t help her involuntary flinch, but just as he’s about to hit her…

Kairi relaxes, lets herself fall forward. His right elbow smashes against her shoulder instead of his keyblade; his red-tipped fingers sink into her hip instead of striking under her ribcage. He staggers back under her weight, half-embracing her, by accident.

She lets him take her weight, slings both her arms tight around his neck. Ignores the way the darkness wisping out of him burns like ice against her. She pulls herself up a little and presses her mouth against his, closed, chapped lips over sharp teeth. The yellow in his eyes gutters like a candle in a draft.

His heart has darkness in it, yes. But hers is made of light.

Unlike her magic, the wellspring of light inside her never runs dry. She holds on tight to him and radiates warmth. Love, affection, friendship, empathy - she beams them out, until the cold of his darkness can’t affect her, until she can feel it pulling back from him, retreating inside again.

“No, you don’t,” says a grim voice from behind Sora. Riku’s strong arms wrap around them both. He looks down at her, his mouth pressed fiercely into Sora’s hair, his eyes a brighter green than she’s ever seen them.

“You can’t purify it away,” he says. “Can’t bottle it up. It’s got to be dealt with.”

“Not by fighting,” she answers softly, her lips moving against Sora’s. “He fights this all the time. If combat was the answer, there wouldn’t still be a problem.”

“‘s not a problem -” Sora mumbles, his breath puffing across her cheeks. He’s still coated in black smoke, but his eyes, blue as blue can be, flicker through the yellow lamp-light surrounding them. 

“Yes, it is!” she and Riku say at the same time.

He starts shaking his head; she squeezes herself closer against him. Riku sighs. It ruffles the hair on top of her head.

“I think you’ve got to admit it, Sora, if we want to get out of here.”

“No, nothing’s the -”

“You know what bothers us!” she bursts out. “You know it, because we’ve told you! But you won’t let us in deep enough to see what still bothers you! Open up! Trust us!”

“We’re here for you,” Riku says. “No matter what, we love you. You can rely on that.”

Sora’s eyes are all blue now, and filling with tears. “I know. I know that. It’s just -” The fingers of his left hand slide out of Kairi’s side. She tries not to shudder too obviously, even though she can feel blood trickling out, soaking her hoodie there. He moves that arm, wrapping it backwards around Riku. His right arm shifts so he’s clinging to her like a drowning man.

“I don’t want it to be a problem. I don’t want it.” His voice breaks, he presses his face to hers. “I want to be happy.” His tears roll down her face, too. “I want to be happy. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

There’s a cracking noise below their feet. They look down, their foreheads still pressed together. Faint spiderweb lines run through the stained glass, and water is beginning to well up. Droplets swell, burst, run together in rivulets. The void is lightening. Light ripples around them, golden lace against an increasingly blue background. It forms patterns she can’t quite identify.

“Keep talking,” Riku murmurs.

“I -” Sora gulps, “think about the future a lot. And I think - I think it’s just gonna keep being like this. Like, I’m afraid to be too happy.” His hand clenches in the fabric of her shirt, pulling it tight. “Because it’s all gonna go away again. Because that’s how our lives work. But I can’t let you guys know I feel that way, because I don’t want you getting scared, or, or sad.”

The sun is shining, glittering on blue ocean that’s up to their knees now, lapping gently. Kairi slides her face along Sora’s cheek, kisses his ear. “That’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll deal with it as it comes.”

He gulps down more air, almost hiccuping. “But we shouldn’t have to. I mean, I’m, I’m glad to help. I want to make sure everybody’s safe. I want to kick the asses of everybody who tries to hurt people. But it shouldn’t happen in the first place, it’s wrong, and I wish we could just live. Like normal people. And be happy.”

The water’s up to Kairi’s thighs, now. Her feet slide a little in the white sand. Strangely, the saltwater doesn’t sting against her burnt leg.

“I don’t want things to change,” Sora says. “But I know they will. I don’t want people getting hurt, I don’t want you guys getting hurt.”

“We’ll pull through,” Riku murmurs. His eyes meet Kairi’s, solemn.

She blinks slowly, like a nod, acknowledging what else he’s saying. “We always have.”

He trembles in their arms. “ _I_ don’t want to hurt. But I know I will.”

Kairi bites her lip, squeezes her eyes shut. Hugs him more tightly.

Riku’s voice is soft and fierce. “I know, love. But we’ll be here to help you through.”

There are gulls crying now. A breeze blows softly, carrying the scent of flowers and volcanic soil. Water laps at her waist, cool and gentle.

“I know,” says Sora.

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡

“- should be coming out of it any moment now. I anticipate that we will need -”

Someone’s talking. Riku knows the voice, but his dazed mind can’t quite place it. Sounds clinical. He thinks of white coats. Even, that’s it.

He opens his eyes, half-expecting the grey sterility of the lab in Radiant Garden. But he’s home. The orange-painted walls, the hand-me-down wooden furniture, the seashells and framed photos on the dresser. He sits up, raises a hand to his head, then yanks it away and stares at it. Seawater drips off his fingers. He’s soaked, actually, and so’s the bed, and the other two people in it.

Kairi’s already sitting up, with Naminé clutching her hands and smiling so widely that Riku’s a little concerned for her; her facial muscles aren’t used to that kind of grin.

“nnn…” Sora grumbles. “Wha’s everybody doin’ here…?”

Ienzo steps into Riku’s line of sight, winding up an extension cord. “We were called in when you wouldn’t wake up.”

“I hear noises!” someone says from the living area, and there’s a sudden stampede of feet.

The door slams open. Riku blinks. Looks like - his parents, and Sora’s, and Kairi’s, and Lea and Leon and Isa looming in the back, and Tidus and Wakka and Chappu and Selphie jumping up and down, and there’s Ventus squirming his way to the front, and there’s the fishery foreman, and the guy who runs the shaved ice stall next to their produce stand, and Aqua and Terra, and there’s Oku barely visible in the hall, and Vanitas even less visible, and then Jiminy hops up on the bed, and then Mickey and Donald and Goofy open the sliding door from the deck and fall into the room, along with Roxas and Xion, and then Ephemer pokes his head in above them, and then the electrician who was supposed to rewire the outside lights, and then three of their classmates from high school and their old homeroom teacher, and then Skuld and Lauriam and Hayner and Pence and Olette and Elrena and his mom’s friends from yoga and the mayor’s secretary and the Fairy Godmother and Cid and Aerith and Yuffie

Riku throws his hands up and stands, though there’s not a lot of room left for him to do so. “Everybody out,” he says. “Everybody but Even, Ienzo, Naminé, and King Mickey. We love you all, we’ll talk to you in a minute.”

“What?!” squawks Donald.

“No, that’s fair,” says Kairi’s dad, even though he looks disappointed as he says it. “Okay, everybody, the path still needs sweeping, the tomatoes need fertilizing, and the deck needs polishing. Let’s get back to it.” There’s kind of an awkward jumble as people figure out how to get out of the crush without stepping on each other, but after a few minutes, there’s just the eight of them left.

“Don’t mind me,” says Jiminy, sitting on the dresser and pulling out his journal. “I’m only here for posterity’s sake.”

“Hey,” Riku starts, but Sora interrupts.

“Let him stay.”

Riku looks at him. He’s drenched, his ungelled hair drooping, and his eyes are puffy and red, but the smile on his face is very small. A tender, tired smile, not a big grin faked to make them all think he’s okay, so Riku relaxes.

“How’d you get all wet?” Naminé asks, still holding Kairi’s hands and shifting uncomfortably on the side of the bed. “You were normal when we found you. Aside from not waking up, of course.”

“Don’t know,” answers Kairi. “There was a big ocean in the dream, though. Maybe part of it came back with us.”

There’s a long explanation, then. Naminé brings them towels from the bathroom while they talk, and Ienzo and Even keep packing away their gear. Riku’s relieved to find out that the researchers only had a rough idea of what was happening inside Sora’s heart.

“This portable equipment is only one third as effective as it ought to be,” Even says, shaking his head disdainfully. “We shall begin working on improving it immediately upon our return to the Garden.”

“Thanks for what you did,” Kairi smiles. She meets Riku’s eyes over Sora’s shoulders, and he thinks she’s as grateful as she is that the graphs and feeds were so fuzzy. Just because Sora needs to admit to his problems, doesn’t mean they all need to put on display without his permission.

“We just kept an eye on things,” Ienzo says. He’s only partly paying attention at this point. He shows something in the chart he’s looking at to Even. “A stress-induced eruption of darkness that produced a coma-like state, not only in the principal, but in those close to him… I didn’t realize this was possible; it has massive ramifications…”

King Mickey asks, “For Sora?”

“No, in general,” Ienzo answers without looking up. “I can’t say for sure, but it seems Riku and Kairi handled the issue. I don’t think he’ll face another situation like this.”

“That’s a relief,” Sora sighs.

Ienzo snaps the folder shut. “I said, I don’t _think._ You’ll have to exercise care in the future, take preventative measures.” He relaxes and half-smiles at them. “As useful as the data is, we’d prefer not to have to do this again.”

“Yes,” Even says. “There was hardly enough room in here to get the EKG hooked up.” There’s a pause, then he coughs. “Though, of course, it is a lovely home.”

“No worries,” says Kairi.

There’s a knock at the door. Naminé answers it. It’s Goofy.

“Everything goin’ alright? Only, some folks have got to start headin’ home, but they all wanna see Sora’s okay, first…”

“Yeah, alright,” Sora says.

Riku asks, “You sure?”

Kairi chimes in, “It’s okay if you need to tell people to back off.”

“No, it’s good. It makes me really happy that they all came to see us. I wanna say thanks.”

Riku’s so tired that he’d like nothing more than to shower and go back to bed. But Sora puts the ‘extra’ in extrovert, and he bounces out of the room as though he’s fresh from the best night’s sleep he ever had.

They all follow, and Riku’s surprised how fun the rest of the afternoon is. There’s way fewer awkward questions than he thinks, even though approximately a quarter of the town’s population is there, and they _ought_ to have some questions about the talking animals, the spaceship parked awkwardly between the edge of the trees and the garden, or the displays of magic that some of the off-worlders can’t seem to keep to themselves. Maybe it’s just the unerring instinct of islanders - to enjoy a party when it’s offered.

The house, for that matter, is sparkling. The to-do list on the fridge is all checked off. Kairi takes it down and quizzes her father about it, and he escorts her around the property, as proud as if _he_ owns the place, pointing out all the work that got done while they were out of it. Kairi wobbles back to Riku’s side eventually, looking gobsmacked. Even the path-lights she wanted are finished, courtesy of Master Aqua.

“There’s nothing left for us to do,” she says, almost whining.

He slings an arm around her. “What do you mean? We’ve got the chickens and the garden, and the farm stand. That’s enough to keep us busy.”

“I guess,” she sighs. “I just like having a project.”

“Well, I can think of one…”

“What?”

He reaches under the neck of his shirt, finds what he is expecting. He pulls out the thalassa shell charm and holds it up. 

“You wanna plan a wedding?”

She stiffens and turns away from him. “Oh, shoot.”

That wasn’t the reaction he was expecting.

“What’s wrong?”

She’s scanning the crowd. “You realize, we haven’t asked Sora yet.”

“Oh,” Riku says. “Huh. You’re right.” Kairi held off on asking because she worried Riku might say no; he’s got so little doubt that Sora will say yes that he forgot it’s not already a done deal.

“Should… should we ask him now?”

She glances at him, confused.

“There’s a lot Sora’s got to deal with. I don’t want to… override that.”

One of her hands rises, curls up near her chin. Her blue-violet eyes grow thoughtful. “That’s true, but… I really am fed up with waiting. Plus, I already asked you. I can’t keep that a secret - can you?”

He shakes his head. “No.” He glances at the charm again. It spins on its platinum chain, sparkling in the light. 

_We’ll go together._

He smiles and takes her hand. “Let’s turn this party into an engagement party.”

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡


	7. Island

The bonfire snaps and crackles. There are sparks of light everywhere - orange embers flying up from the fire, green fireflies wavering through the nighttime trees, blue bioluminescent plankton in the ocean. 

The play island belongs to the little kids during the day. After sundown, the teenagers paddle out to it. But there’s been nobody here tonight but the three of them.

Sora’s glad. He’s a little worn out, emotionally - too many highs and lows in a short period of time. 

He grins, though, looking at the shell charm in his hand. Pretty major high, right there. And after the raucous party last night, and all the well-wishing and congratulations today, he’s happy to chill out on the beach with his two favorite people.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, it’s true,” Riku protests. “She really thought I was gonna say no!”

Sora flips a little spray of sand at Kairi. “What?! Like anybody could turn that down!”

She tosses a handful back at him. He turns his face away in time but inhales too soon. “Yuck! Thand in my mouf!”

“It was a reasonable concern,” she defends. “Riku’s so serious. Anyway, he said yes, I was wrong, quit picking on me!”

“No way,” Sora grins. “I’m telling this story to everybody.”

“Me too,” Riku says, and ruffles Sora’s hair, shaking sand out of it. 

Kairi mutters, “Meanies,” and stands up. “ _Anyway_ , we’ve waited this long. Show us the new keyblade!”

Sora stands too and calls up the Kingdom Key. It settles into his hand like an old friend, as familiar and necessary as his own heartbeat. He holds up the charm, reading the gold letters on it by the flickering firelight. 

_Past destiny, and through the sky,_

_We found our hearts had joined,_

_always thinking of each other._

_Let’s make an oath._

_From now on, we’ll go together._

He unhooks the Kingdom Key’s keychain, and puts the shell charm on in its place. The blade blurs and changes. The new keyblade has a hilt of swirling gold blushing to rose, with his crown icon on the guard. The blade is lustrous, with a golden chain running through it up to the teeth, which look like the thalassa charm rendered in colorful glass, with shapes like flowers and parts of Riku’s unbound heart symbol.

It feels warm in his hand, and joyful. Like a gleeful shout and a warm hug, like flying, like coming home after a long time away. It feels like Kairi and Riku linking their hands with his. 

Riku summons Way to the Heart and holds it up too. It’s easy to see that they’re a pair. “A matched set,” he says.

“Nah,” Sora answers. “It’s only two-thirds of the set. We better make a charm for Kairi, so she can have one too.” He looks across the fire at her. “Would you teach us how to make them?”

She laughs, covering her mouth. “Yeah, that’d be great. I’d love that.”

Sora nods. “It’s settled, then. We’ll start tomorrow.”

“It might take a while,” she cautions. “Thalassa shells are rare. That’s why they’re lucky. It took me years of beachcombing to find enough for those.”

“What?!”

Riku looks at his charm. “That’s right… I guess I never thought about it.”

She smiles. “Well, I have two at home, so we’re partway there. And we can practice using other shells.” She summons her keyblade and holds it up to join theirs. “And I’m very happy with Destiny’s Embrace in the meantime.”

“Hey, Sora,” says Riku. “What’s yours called?”

Sora flourishes the new blade. Names for keyblades always come easily. “Oathmaker.” 

“Sounds familiar,” Kari giggles.

He tosses it spinning into the air and catches it. “So? It’s a good name.”

“True,” says Riku. He dismisses Way to the Heart and turns to the cooler nestled in the sand. “Who’s ready for cake?”

“Me!” Sora and Kairi both say.

He lifts out a white cardboard box and sets it carefully on top of the cooler. Inside is a fraisier cake, a marvel of strawberries and cream.

Kairi sighs happily at the sight. “We are so lucky to be friends with them.”

Sora puffs his chest out and says, “I’m Little Chef’s star pupil, of course he spoils us.” The cake arrived on their doorstep this afternoon, with a card from Scrooge McDuck and the Little Chef congratulating them on their engagement.

It’s delicious, of course. After they eat, Riku puts more driftwood on the fire. Kairi pulls out her gummiphone and props it up on the cooler. Music floats out of it. She holds her hands out to them. “Let’s dance.”

They spin, kicking up sprays of sand. They weave a little magic into it, to rise and dance in the air. The fireflies swirl around them, confused by these intruders into their territory. 

Kairi holds his hand and twirls under his arm. Riku dips them both. Sora’s heart pounds in his chest as he looks at them in the firelight, smiling and singing along to the music. He’s so glad to be here with them, to be in love with them, to have them love him back. He laughs. Right now, he doesn’t care what the future holds. With them, he can face anything.

When he wakes up shivering in the predawn air, he cares a lot. They camped out overnight, and the top blanket has slipped down, but it’s not the chill that’s seized his heart in cold claws. 

He can’t help the thought that it’s dangerous to be this happy. It’s gonna hurt so bad next time they get split up. It’s not fair that he’s always losing them. He gasps, halfway to panic. It’s not fair, he doesn’t want it -

For a moment, old coping mechanisms take hold. He forces a smile, breath whistling through his locked teeth, as he bottles the fear away. Don’t be stupid, he tells himself. It’s dumb to worry, just let life come as it comes.

His higher brain kicks in. Memory, not just instinct. He reaches out for Riku and Kairi, finds their hands and clings to them. Kairi murmurs and cuddles closer. Riku wakes and mumbles, “Y’okay, Sora…?”

“I’m a little scared,” he whispers.

Riku pushes himself up on one arm, twisting to look around the shore. The movement rouses Kairi. 

“Wffgl?”

“Sorry,” Sora says. “It’s -” He almost says, _silly,_ and catches himself. He takes a deep breath. “I get that it’s okay to be scared,” he says.

Kairi sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She has ridiculous bedhead. So does Riku, actually. “What are we scared of?”

Sora sits, too, tugs the blanket up across their laps. “ _I’m_ scared. But it’s not… a rational fear. Like, if I have to be afraid, can’t I be scared of actually scary stuff?” He lets irritation take the lead. Anger may not actually be healthier for him than fright, but it’s a lot better feeling. “I get these panic attacks, sometimes, when I think about whatever’s coming next, but it’s so… so shapeless.”

“Anxiety?” asks Riku.

“Yeah! I’m scared of things changing. And that’s stupid. Everything changes.”

Kairi leans her head on his shoulder. “Sometimes change is good. We’re engaged! That’s a change.” She turns her head, kisses the side of his neck. It tickles, and he can’t help a giggle. That makes her giggle, too.

Riku squeezes his hand, then slides his fingers loose so he can put his long arm across their shoulders. “I know how you feel. But, even the bad changes… we can _make_ them good. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re all pretty strong. We can just tell destiny to go our way.”

Sora leans into them. The fear is ebbing away. How easy it was, all along! Talking about it made it better. He laughs. “Who’da thunk?”

“Thunk what?” asks Riku.

“Nothing,” Sora says. “Don’t worry.” He smiles at them, sincere.

The sun’s peeking up, the first rays of light skipping along the waves.

“Hey,” he says, and feels himself blush. “Talking of stupid fears….” He reaches under the covers, digs in his pocket. He slept on the small velvet box all night, but it still looks perfect.

“Kairi, sorry for making fun of you last night. I haven’t been holding on to mine for that long, but I was worried, too.”

They’re both staring at the box. Kairi gasps and puts a hand to her mouth. “You don’t mean…?!”

“Yep.” He opens it. Three rings gleam from the blue velvet. The metal is a nameless color that reflects the shades of the sunrise. There’s pale sky-blue in there, and yellow, and pink, and half a dozen other colors, shifting from moment to moment.

“Roxas helped me gather the ingredients, and I had them synthesized at the moogle shop in Radiant Garden. I’ve just been hanging on to them since then.”

He pulls one out, turns it so the inner side catches a beam of brightening sunlight. _Dearly Beloved_ is etched there. “It’s the same on each,” he says. “They’re not personalized like Kairi’s poems.”

“Love…” Riku says, grinning lopsidedly. The light’s catching in his mussed hair, leaving glints of gold among the silver. He puts out his hand, palm up, and Sora gives it to him. He examines it, then holds it back toward Sora.

Confused, Sora reaches for the ring. 

Riku closes his fist around it. “No, give me your hand.”

Sora blinks. “Oh!” He does, fingers splayed. Riku slips the ring onto his finger.

“Looks pretty,” Kairi murmurs. “But… a little big?”

Riku chokes and exhales at the same time. “That must be mine! They’re sized!”

Sora and Kairi look at each other and burst out in giggles. “Ooops!”

Riku plucks it off his finger and pulls the middle one out of the box. “Pretend that didn’t happen,” he mutters.

“Nah,” says Sora. “Since I can’t make fun of Kairi waiting without being a hypocrite, _this_ is gonna be the funny proposal story.”

“Thanks,” says Kairi, and Riku says, “Ha-ha. Hold your hand out again.”

This time, the ring fits perfectly.

Sora takes the next one, and slips it onto Kairi’s hand. He’s tearing up. This is so sappy - they don’t need the rings, they’ve already got the charms, they’ve already asked and answered each other’s proposals, they’ve told everybody they know - but that doesn’t stop the warmth in his heart from rising through him and filling his eyes.

Kairi puts the last one on Riku’s ring finger. They all raise their hands up together, admiring. The sky is pink and gold, the clouds like scattered balls of cotton. The tide’s coming back in, waves hushing across the sand. Gulls are beginning to call. Sandpipers and curlews are running across the sand, heedless of the humans sitting so close.

Riku says, voice so soft, “I promise, from here on out, to give you guys everything I’ve got.”

“That’s not much of a promise,” says Kairi gently. “You already do that.”

“No promises,” Sora says. “Just the oath from Kairi’s charms. We’ll go together.”

He pulls them both toward him and kisses them. Once, twice, three times each. Riku switches arms, dropping his left from around their shoulders and pushing them back down to the blankets with his right for more kissing, and more.

 _Yeah,_ Sora thinks, feeling a little drunk on sweetness and light and love, listening to the ocean rush in and out, _sometimes the future doesn’t scare me at all._

_After all, we’ll face it together._

☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡☆★♡

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2020 Fandom 5k challenge - I went drastically over the minimum wordcount, because dangit, if canon won't deal with the ramifications of Anti- and Rage-Form, I will.
> 
> Serie11, I hope you enjoy. Your prompt letters were huge sources of inspiration as I worked on this, and though I went right up to the wire on finishing it*, I had a blast writing it.
> 
> *Literally, I was writing it right up 'til the last day before the extended reveal deadline. I excised the middle chunk entirely so I could post it as a complete work for the due date, but the delay gave me time to get the whole thing down as I had imagined.


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